{{A Burundian court has sentenced 182 followers of a Catholic prophet, who claims to see visions of the Virgin Mary, to up to five years in jail for defying police orders, a court spokesman said Saturday.}}<\/p>\n
The disciples of 30-year-old prophet Zebiya, were arrested Tuesday morning after defying a ban to gather on a hilltop that has become a place of pilgrimage.<\/p>\n
Zebiya has reportedly seen visions on the hill on the 12th day of every month.<\/p>\n
“Fifteen adults thought to be the leaders of the group were sentenced to five years each,” Elie Ntunwanayo, Burundi Supreme Court spokesman .<\/p>\n
Court documents showed 182 people had been sentenced, with jail terms varying between three years and six months.<\/p>\n
“They were all arrested and sentenced for civil disobedience,” Ntunwanayo said.<\/p>\n
Twenty children under 14 years-old were released by the court.<\/p>\n
The trial took just over 5 hours with a verdict reached at around midnight on Friday.<\/p>\n
In March, police in the east African nation clashed with Zebiya’s followers leaving at least six people dead and 35 wounded.<\/p>\n
Violence broke out after hundreds of her followers were blocked by police as they tried to gather at her hilltop shrine.<\/p>\n
{AFP}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{A Burundian court has sentenced 182 followers of a Catholic prophet, who claims to see visions of the Virgin Mary, to up to five years in jail for defying police orders, a court spokesman said Saturday.}} The disciples of 30-year-old prophet Zebiya, were arrested Tuesday morning after defying a ban to gather on a hilltop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[99],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-7180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","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\/7180","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7180"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=7180"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=7180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}