Commission to be set up on political prisoners

The Implementation Monitoring Committee (IMC) on the Burundi peace agreement ended a week of talks in the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha on Saturday with an agreement that the Burundi government should establish a commission on political prisoners. The IMC agreed that this commission should determine who is a political prisoner in Burundi, investigate their prison conditions and the state of their files, the independent Hirondelle news agency reported at the end of last week. The commission would then present its report to the government and the National Assembly, it added.

The authorities in Bujumbura had already agreed on the establishment of such a commission, in accordance with the peace agreement, and asked the UN to send experts to work on it, Hirondelle reported. The Arusha accords did not specify the composition of the commission, which will have to be approved by the IMC. The Hutu rebel FNL and CNDD-FDD, who have not been part of the Arusha peace process, have held the liberation of political prisoners as one of the main conditions for a ceasefire with the government.