Burundi’s former president Pierre Buyoya’s body was returned to his native country on Tuesday, more than three years after he was buried thousands of kilometers (miles) away in Mali.
Buyoya, who was hailed with promoting democracy in the small African country but accused of participation in his successor’s killing, died in Paris in December 2020 from Covid-19.
Later that month, Buyoya, 71, was buried in Bamako, Mali, where he had served as the African Union’s special envoy to Mali and the Sahel for the previous eight years.
At the time, a top Burundian government official stated that Buyoya had the right to be buried in his native country but would not receive the honors accorded to a former head of state due to the sentence imposed on him.
A source at Burundi’s major airport, Bujumbura, said the plane carrying his remains landed early Tuesday afternoon.
“In order to respect the deceased’s last wishes, the family has requested and received permission from Burundian authorities to repatriate and rebury his remains in his native country,” the Buyoya family said in a statement issued to AFP on Monday.
The reburial will be held in a private ceremony on Wednesday at the family’s farm in the southern town of Rutovo.
Buyoya, an ethnic Tutsi army colonel, originally rose to power in a coup in 1987.
He resigned in 1993 after Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu, won Burundi’s first democratic elections and easily defeated him for president.
He reclaimed the president in 1996, this time by a coup, and signed the Arusha Accords in 2000, which attempted to end the country’s horrific civil war. He stood down in 2003 as per the conditions of the agreement.
In October 2020, he was sentenced to life in prison in absentia together with 18 other defendants for Ndadaye’s assassination by hardline Tutsi soldiers after less than four months in government.
The assassination sparked a decade-long struggle between the majority Hutus and the minority Tutsis, in which an estimated 300,000 people perished.
Buyoya initially described the trial as a “sham” but eventually resigned from his position at AU, citing a desire to clear his name.
Since 2005, Burundi has been dominated by the CNDD-FDD party, which emerged from the primary Hutu insurrection.
In 2015, riots and an attempted coup erupted over then-President Pierre Nkurunziza’s bid for a third term. At least 1,200 people were killed, and 400,000 fled the country.
Nkurunziza, a devout evangelical, died abruptly in June 2020, soon before handing over to Evariste Ndayishimiye, a hardliner who had won elections the month before and is still in charge today.