Burundi: New president pardons 40% of inmates in break from past, and decongest prisons

Burundi is to free 5,255 prisoners as part of a presidential pardon aimed at emptying overcrowded jails, according to a decree seen by reporters on Monday.

The Burundian branch of the international NGO Action by Christians for the Abolition of Torture (ACAT) said it amounts to 40 percent of an estimated 13,200 prisoners.

The East African country’s prisons have a capacity of 4,100.

A presidential statement dated March 5, 2021 granted amnesty to 5,255 inmates countrywide with the exception of those who committed crimes against humanity and other major crimes. In the statement, President Évariste Ndayishimiye said he is “convinced that an exceptional measure of clemency is needed to decongest prisons and improve conditions of detention.”

The prisoners to be pardoned are those serving sentences of up to 5 years, with certain exceptions such as participation in an armed group or threatening national security. Those convicted of corruption will also be freed on the condition that they pay back misappropriated funds as well as damages and interest ordered by the courts.

“Those convicted of corruption and/or corruption-related offences regardless of the sentence imposed, provided they have paid the amounts of embezzlement and the damages and interest pronounced by the courts and tribunals will benefit,” the statement reads.

This comes as the president has launched a clampdown on corruption that is said to have greatly impacted the country’s economy for decades.

Last year, Ndayishimiye granted amnesty to journalists convicted of threatening the country’s security in a highly publicized move after making promises to ease restrictive tactics by his predecessor’s administration. They had been sentenced to two and a half years in prison, and were released on Christmas Eve after spending 430 days in jail.

The journalists were arrested in October 2019 while reporting in Bubanza province on the insecurity that befell in the region. They were accused of attempts of conspiracy that undermined the country’s internal security which the four journalists refuted and argued that they were only doing their work.

Ndayishimiye was elected in May last year. He succeeded the late president Pierre Nkurunziza, whose insistence on a third term in office in 2015 plunged the country into a serious and prolonged political crisis.