A coup in Niger: the military junta leaves the head of state to starve?

one of Military Council in Niger According to one of the close associates, the head of state, Muhammad Bazoum, who was arrested and declared impeached, is in mortal danger. “They are killing him,” Niger’s ambassador to the United States, Mamadou Kyari Lyman Tengeri, said in an interview with the Associated Press news agency. Bazoum sits with his family in the unlit basement of the presidential palace in Niamey. An advisor recently reported that the military council had been withholding food supplies from the president, his wife and their 20-year-old son for about a week, and the family had no electricity or gas to cook either.

According to Liman Tengeri, he communicates with the head of state at least once a day. The ambassador described himself as a close confidant of Bazoum. They have been colleagues for 30 years, and Liman Tengeri had known the 63-year-old head of state when the latter was a philosophy lecturer, head of the teachers’ union and democracy activist when he was young.

The coup is strongly condemned

“The junta chief’s plan is to starve him,” Lyman Tingiri told the Associated Press. This is inhumane and the world should not accept it. This cannot be tolerated in 2023.”

Bzoom has not been seen in public since July 26. On that day, the Republican Guard officers announced the deposition of the head of state. Abd al-Rahman Tiani, commander of the elite unit, later declared himself the new ruler. The putschists dissolved all institutions. At the international level, the coup was strongly condemned, especially by Western countries, which considered Niger the last reliable partner in the Sahel region in the fight against Islamic extremists.

Recently, the Community of West African Nations Ecowas increased pressure on the military junta and decided to mobilize an intervention force for a possible deployment in Niger in order to restore civil order in the country.

(DPA/for)