The body of former Burundian president Pierre Buyoya was returned to his native country on Tuesday, over three years after being buried in Mali.
Buyoya, who played a significant role in fostering democracy in Burundi but was implicated in the assassination of his successor, died of Covid-19 in Paris in December 2020. He was 71 years old.
Later that month, Buyoya was buried in Bamako, Mali, where he had served as the African Union’s special envoy to Mali and the Sahel for eight years.
At that time, a senior Burundian government official stated that while Buyoya had the right to be buried in his native country, he would not receive the honors accorded to a former head of state due to a sentence imposed on him.
A source at Burundi’s main airport in Bujumbura confirmed that the plane carrying his remains landed early Tuesday afternoon.
“In order to respect the deceased’s last wishes, the family has requested and received permission from Burundian authorities to repatriate and rebury his remains in his native country,” the Buyoya family said in a statement issued to AFP on Monday.
The reburial will take place in a private ceremony on Wednesday at the family’s farm in the southern town of Rutovu.
Buyoya, an ethnic Tutsi army colonel, came to power in a coup in 1987. He resigned in 1993 after Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu, won Burundi’s first democratic elections and defeated him for the presidency.
He reclaimed the presidency in 1996 through another coup and signed the Arusha Accords in 2000, which aimed to end the country’s civil war. He stepped down in 2003 as per the agreement’s terms.
In October 2020, Buyoya was sentenced to life in prison in absentia, along with 18 other defendants, for Ndadaye’s assassination by hardline Tutsi soldiers after less than four months in office. The assassination triggered a decade-long conflict between the majority Hutus and the minority Tutsis, resulting in an estimated 300,000 deaths.
Buyoya initially described the trial as a “sham” but eventually resigned from his position at the AU to clear his name.
In 2015, Burundi experienced riots and an attempted coup over then-President Pierre Nkurunziza’s bid for a third term. At least 1,200 people were killed, and 400,000 fled the country.
Nkurunziza, a devout evangelical, died suddenly in June 2020, shortly before handing over to Evariste Ndayishimiye, who won elections the month before and is still in office today.
