{"id":25224,"date":"2016-05-10T02:28:16","date_gmt":"2016-05-10T02:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/burundi-court-jails-21-for-life-over-coup-bid\/"},"modified":"2016-05-10T02:27:37","modified_gmt":"2016-05-10T02:27:37","slug":"burundi-court-jails-21-for-life-over-coup-bid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/burundi-court-jails-21-for-life-over-coup-bid\/","title":{"rendered":"Burundi court jails 21 for life over coup bid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{The source said two senior army officers initially acquitted were also given life terms.}<\/p>\n<p>Burundi\u2019s Supreme Court on Monday slapped life sentences on 21 army officers involved in a supposed coup plot in May last year.<\/p>\n<p>The court had in January given 30-year jail terms to nine officers and sentenced eight other soldiers to five years while acquitting seven others.<\/p>\n<p>But prosecutors appealed the initial sentence. The decision is however not binding as it can be appealed once more.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTwenty-one officers including the main accused like General Cyrille Ndayirukiye were sentenced to life,\u201d a judicial source said, speaking in the central city of Gitega.<\/p>\n<p>The source said two senior army officers initially acquitted were also given life terms.<\/p>\n<p>Prosecutors had said in January that they wanted all jailed for life and the seven acquitted to face a re-trial.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the mayor of Burundi\u2019s capital on Monday vowed to crush \u201cterrorists\u201d blamed for a spate of weekend grenade attacks that left three people dead and about 20 injured.<\/p>\n<p>Hundreds have been killed and a quarter of a million people have fled Burundi since President Pierre Nkurunziza\u2019s controversial decision April 2015 to run for a third term, a vote he won amid opposition boycotts in July.<\/p>\n<p>Anti-government protests were brutally quashed and killings and attacks have become a regular feature in the troubled country as a political crisis shows no sign of abating.<\/p>\n<p>Bujumbura mayor Freddy Mbonimpa told AFP that three people had died in the capital since Friday in \u201cterrorist acts targeting peaceful citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese terrorists are trying to instil panic&#8230; we are in the process of breaking up these terrorist groups with the help of the local population,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-12220 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/bur_pic.jpg\" alt=\"Heavily armed police patrol the streets in Bujumbura on April 12, 2016. Hundreds have been killed and a quarter of a million people have fled Burundi since President Pierre Nkurunziza\u2019s controversial decision April 2015 to run for a third term, a vote he won amid opposition boycotts in July.\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{The source said two senior army officers initially acquitted were also given life terms.} Burundi\u2019s Supreme Court on Monday slapped life sentences on 21 army officers involved in a supposed coup plot in May last year. The court had in January given 30-year jail terms to nine officers and sentenced eight other soldiers to five [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[99],"byline":[2461],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-25224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-justice","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-daily-nation"],"bylines":[{"id":2461,"name":"Daily Nation","slug":"daily-nation","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2461,"name":"Daily Nation","slug":"daily-nation","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25224\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25224"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=25224"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=25224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}