Kayanza : a bank agent sentenced to five years in prison for insulting the presidential couple

Jacques Ntakirutimana was sentenced by the Kayanza Court (northern Burundi) in a flagrante delicto trial on Tuesday. This BGF (Bank of Management and Financing) agent was accused of insulting the presidential couple. The concerned person rejected all the accusations against him but admitted to having commented – like everyone else – on the generalized crisis that the country is going through.

INFO SOS Médias Burundi

The facts for which the 36-year-old man was sentenced took place in a sauna room of a hotel located in the town center of Kayanza, last Saturday. The concerned person was arrested the next day.

According to the prosecution, Jacques Ntakirutimana attacked President Evariste Ndayishimiye and First Lady Angeline Ndayishimiye.

According to the prosecution, Ntakirutimana said that President Neva is doing nothing to rectify the current situation.

The accused also allegedly said that President Evariste Ndayishimiye is characterized by nepotism and favoritism. “He grants contracts to his family, especially his children.” The defendant was also accused of attacking First Lady Angeline Ndayishimiye “who hires doctors and nurses in her hospital with no experience or performance, almost all of them from her family.”

Angeline Ndayishimiye has a private hospital in the hometown of the Head of State in Kibimba, in Giheta district in Gitega province (central Burundi).

Jacques Ntakirutimana acknowledged that he had only made comments on the general crisis that the country is currently going through, insisting that “the rest of the team made the same observations”.

“I had no intention of tarnishing the image of the presidential couple”, he argued.

The public prosecutor requested a five-year prison sentence and a fine of 50,000 Burundi francs against him. The Court imposed the same sentence.

Several residents of the provincial town center and its surroundings had gone to follow the hearing. Those who spoke to SOS Médias Burundi spoke of “notorious injustice”, “the facts for which Jacques Ntakirutimana was judged being a reality sometimes acknowledged by the president himself”, they recalled.

The defendant was not assisted by a lawyer. He still has a chance of appealing the ruling of the first judge.

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Defendants in a courtroom in southwest Burundi, November 2024 (SOS Médias Burundi)