{A Swiss court has ruled that the remains of Burundi’s deposed king Mwambutsa IV, who died 40 years ago, must stay in Switzerland, ending a drawn out legal battle, local media reported on Tuesday.}<\/p>\n
Mwambutsa led Burundi at independence from Belgium in 1962, but was deposed just four years later in a dispute linked to rivalries between ethnic Tutsis and Hutus, which still haunt the country.<\/p>\n
The monarch died in Switzerland in 1977, leaving clear instructions that his remains should never be returned to Burundi.<\/p>\n
But his daughter and the Burundian government campaigned for his remains to be repatriated, reportedly hoping to use the occasion to organise a ceremony promoting national reconciliation.<\/p>\n
In 2012, one of the king’s relatives authorised the exhumation of his remains ahead of an eventual repatriation.<\/p>\n
Mwambutsa’s niece Esther Kamatari opposed the process insisting the king’s last wishes should be honoured.<\/p>\n
Switzerland’s federal court, the nation’s highest legal authority, has sided with Kamatari, the ATS news agency said.<\/p>\n
The judges upheld a ruling issued last year by a lower court in Geneva.<\/p>\n
Amid the legal back and fourth following his exhumation, Mwambutsa’s remains have been held in a cold-storage facility at a Geneva funeral home for the past five years.<\/p>\n
Kamatari fled Burundi herself in 1970, ultimately settling in Paris where she worked as a model, including for top designers like Christian Dior and Yves Saint Laurent.<\/p>\n
She voiced interest in contesting in Burundi’s 2004 presidential election but never made it onto the ballot.<\/p>\n
Burundi has been seized by crisis for two years, since President Pierre Nkurunziza sought a third term. The turmoil has left an estimated 500 people dead, according to the UN.<\/p>\n
Source:AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{A Swiss court has ruled that the remains of Burundi’s deposed king Mwambutsa IV, who died 40 years ago, must stay in Switzerland, ending a drawn out legal battle, local media reported on Tuesday.} Mwambutsa led Burundi at independence from Belgium in 1962, but was deposed just four years later in a dispute linked to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-34317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","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":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","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":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34317","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\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34317\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34317"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=34317"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=34317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}