Niger: Global Push Grows to Free Niger’s Former President Mohamed Bazoum

Niger’s president Mohamed Bazoum has spent 550 days as a hostage of the military junta in the capital, Niamey. His lawyers say that his detention is setting a dangerous precedent and have launched a global campaign to have him released.

World leaders have joined the call for his freedom, and many have signed a special petition to have him released which has now reached Washington.

The campaign has also created a website dedicated to ensuring Mohamed Bazoum is not forgotten.

“His unjust detention is a call to action–for democracy, justice, and the principles he represents. Together, we stand with President Bazoum and demand his freedom,” the petition reads.

The American human rights lawyer and prosecutor Reed Brody is one of Mohamed Bazoum’s lawyers and spoke to him regularly until Bazoum’s phone was taken away, almost a year ago.

Since then, Bazoum and his wife have been cut off from the rest of the world, Brody told RFI.

“Since the coup in July 2023, they have been confined to his former palace. Only a doctor can visit him twice a week,” Brody said.

Concern grows for Niger’s president

In recent weeks, his lawyers and campaigners advocating for his release have travelled across the globe to rally support, with backing from the United Nations, including the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Secretary-General.

The case is symbolic for Niger and its citizens.

“It speaks about the lack of rule of law,” he said. “No charges have been brought against [former] president Bazoum and his wife. There is no legal basis for holding him. I think it’s a symbol because the military doesn’t want [him]… to talk to the world.”

Undemocratic rule

The coup that put the junta in power stormed the the palace and deposed Bazoum over 550 days ago.

“…for 550 days, unelected leaders have ruled over a once hopeful country, with no timetable for elections,” said Jeffrey Smith, the executive director of the public advocacy group Vanguard Africa, in Washington DC.

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Accept Manage my choices “They have seriously [and] violently trampled on basic freedoms,” Smith told RFI. “They’ve imprisoned hundreds of citizens, chief among them…the elected president of the country, Mohamed Bazoum, who in 2021 completed the first peaceful handover of power in Niger’s history.”

Since the 2023 coup, the military have reinforced their power in the country, and have not clarified when they intend to install representative democracy.

Niger is also about to leave the West African economic bloc Ecowas on 29 January, along with Mali and Burkina Faso, after forming their own Alliance of Sahel States.

Fears for the future in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso over Ecowas withdrawal

Security experts and members of the diaspora have voiced concern over what lies ahead.

Trump’s attention

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The promoters of the petition hope that the new administration in the United States might help push for a final decision on Bazoum’s liberation.

“It is always possible,” Smith told RFI, “regardless of your own internal policies, as we’ve seen before. They can re-engage, perhaps in a neutral way, with the juntas.”

According to Brody, the new Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has spoken about promoting democracy worldwide. As President Bazoum was a “friend of the United States,” this could make a difference.

“While respecting his country’s sovereignty, he was a strong advocate in the fight against terrorism. I hope that Donald Trump and Marco Rubio will look at this man and say, ‘This is the kind of man who shouldn’t be in jail. This is the kind of man who should be free,'” Brody added.

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