Prison relief in Burundi : between official figures and troubling realities

SOS Médias Burundi

Bujumbura, July 18, 2025 – 49 men and 5 women were released on Friday from Mpimba Central Prison in Bujumbura, the commercial capital of Burundi. They are among the beneficiaries of a major prison relief operation relaunched at the end of June in Ruyigi, in Buhumuza Province (eastern Burundi). The operation was initially launched on November 14, 2024, and dubbed a “presidential pardon.”

This operation, launched in a context of worrying prison overcrowding, aims to relieve prisons while promoting the social reintegration of inmates.

But according to prisoners and lawyers, this measure raises questions. “There are prisoners whose trials were still ongoing who benefited from this provisional release, while others who have completed their sentences or have been cleared by the courts have not. It’s unfair,” laments a lawyer based in Ruyigi.

According to statistics from the local Ntabariza association, responsible for protecting prisoners’ rights, in Mpimba prison alone, there were 854 people illegally detained as of January 2025. “That is, prisoners who have completed their sentences, been provisionally released, or have been cleared by the courts,” explains a member of this organization.

The Association for the Fight against Unemployment and Torture (ALUCHOTO) echoes the same sentiment. In a confidential report consulted by SOS Médias Burundi, the association refers to an “arbitrary system of detention maintained by political interference in judicial matters.”

A prisoner whose sentence was served several months ago remains incarcerated : “The Burundian law is backwards. It’s the public prosecutor who decides who to release, even though he is one of the plaintiffs. We see a lack of trust between the courts and the public prosecutor, because a judge’s decision should be executed without interference from the public prosecutor.”

In Burundi, prisons have a limited capacity of 4,294 places, while the prison population often exceeds 12,000 inmates. Some facilities operate at more than 300% of their capacity, exacerbating detention conditions and internal tensions.