A leading Niger civil society figure and critic of the military-led authorities has been arrested after returning from a trip abroad, his NGO and other sources said.The reason for the detention late on Tuesday of Moussa Tchangari, who has voiced “total support” for Niger’s ousted president Mohamed Bazoum, is not known.He is among those who have been critical of the military junta which seized power in the July 2023 coup, an act that Tchangari has described as a “setback”.Since then, Bazoum, who had been democratically elected, has been imprisoned with his wife Hadiza at the presidential palace in the capital Niamey.”Moussa Tchangari, secretary general of the Alternative Citizen Spaces association, has just been taken by armed elements to an unknown destination,” Kaka Touda, a member of the NGO, said on social media.Touda said that a security forces “unit” had been deployed in front of Tchangari’s home after his detention.According to the Air Info newspaper, Tchangari “was coming back from a trip outside of the country” when he was arrested at home by “four men dressed in civilian clothes”.Searches were carried out at his home and his phone and computer were confiscated, it added.Tchangari was arrested in May 2015 and later provisionally freed over critical remarks by his organisation about the humanitarian situation in southeastern Niger, where the army is still fighting jihadists.Last month, Nigerien-Ivorian journalist Serge Mathurin Adou was jailed in Niger over allegations he attempted to destabilise fellow junta-led Sahel nation Burkina Faso.Since the coup, Niger’s rulers have turned their back on former colonial power France and forged ties with fellow juntas in Burkina Faso and Mali as well as with Russia.
Wed, 04 Dec 2024 13:38:18 GMT
