A prominent lawyer and political figure in Burkina Faso was abducted Saturday, days after he published a critical assessment of the country’s situation, his entourage told AFP on Sunday.
A close associate told AFP that Hermann Yameogo was abducted at his home in the capital Ouagadougou by armed men in plainclothes, amid fears he may have been pressganged into the military like other regime critics and sent to fight jihadist groups.
“They arrived around 1 pm (1300 GMT) in several vehicles. Some of them surrounded the house before others carried out a thorough search. They took telephones, all the computers and several documents,” the source said.
Yameogo, 77, is a son of Maurice Yameogo, the first president (1959-1966) of independent Burkina Faso, then called Upper Volta.
President of the National Union for Democracy and Development ( UNDD ), last Wednesday he issued a critical essay on the country’s social and political situation, which was widely shared on social media.
Burkina Faso has been ruled by a military regime headed by Captain Ibrahim Traore since he seized power following a coup in September 2022.
Yameogo wrote that “an objective, lucid, and courageous analysis of the national situation can only conclude that our country finds itself, for the first time in its contemporary history, suspended over a void.”
The military junta has been accused of misusing a general mobilisation decree in the country’s fight against Islamic militants to suppress dissenting voices, forcibly conscripting critics to fight on the front line.
