APA – Dakar (Senegal) – The deposed president appealed for help in a video lasting less than a minute.
The Committee for the Transition and Restoration of Institutions (CTRI), the junta that claimed to have overthrown Ali Bongo on the night of 29 to 30 August, has released information about the conditions in which he and those close to him are being held.
According to the CTRI, the overthrown President Ali Bongo is being kept “under house arrest (…) surrounded by his family and doctors.” Omar Bongo’s son Ali suffered a stroke in 2018.
The junta also revealed the identities of his relatives arrested for “high treason against the institutions of the State, massive misappropriation of public funds, international financial embezzlement in an organized gang, forgery and use of forgeries, falsification of the signature of the President of the Republic, and drug trafficking.”
They include Noureddine Bongo Valentin, son of the deposed president and general coordinator of presidential affairs), Iann Ghislain Ngoulou, Mohamed Ali Saliou, deputy chief of staff to the head of state, Abdoul Osseini, Jessye Ella Ekogha, special adviser to the president of the republic and presidential spokesperson since December 2019. The military also arrested Steeve Nzegho Dieko, secretary general of the Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG).
The junta has promised that an investigation will be carried out by the competent authorities to ensure that those arrested answer “for their actions.”
In a video lasting less than a minute, Ali Bongo, who spoke in English, called on his “friends across the world, to make a lot of noise.” He said he had no news of his wife and son, who he claimed were not with him. “I don’t know what’s going on. So I’m calling on you to make noise,” he implored.
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