Lawyer for jailed WHO employee calls for her release

The lawyer defending Gertrude Nyamoya - a local World Health Organisation (WHO) employee detained with four others in connection with last November's murder of former WHO representative to Burundi, Kassi Manlan - has called for her release. "How can one release the brain behind the so-called murder and keep his assistant?" attorney Francois Nyamoya said, referring to an expatriate who was released and allowed to leave the country after being accused of being behind the murder and placed under house arrest. He said that his client, who is also his sister, had been accused of "translating" between the freed WHO expatriate and the watchmen who allegedly committed the murder. Investigations into the murder of Manlan are ongoing, following the government's recent decision to dissolve the commission charged with investigating his death and to create a new one, headed by public prosecutor Gerard Ngendabanka, who also led the first commission. Nyamoya, although satisfied with the dissolution of the first commission, expressed disappointment with the new commission and Ngendabanka, a man he says "piloted the first commission" and now chairs the current one. "Looking at the composition of the new commission, I do not expect anything from it," Nyamoya said. Nyamoya suggested that a new neutral commission should be set up, involving "honest and competent Burundi lawyers and policemen as well as magistrates and policemen sent by WHO". According to Nyamoya, the first commission had worked in "hindering justice rather than helping in getting to the truth".