LAWYERS for Niger’s ousted president on Friday rejected claims by the new military rulers that he had tried to escape, as France said its forces would be gone from the West African country by year’s end as planned.
Since he was toppled by the military on July 26, Niger’s president Mohamed Bazoum had been held at his residence in the heart of the presidential palace along with his wife and son.
The military regime said late on Thursday that Bazoum had “tried to escape” with his family, two cooks and two security agents.
The escape plan involved getting to a hideout on the outskirts of the capital Niamey before taking helicopters “belonging to a foreign power” towards Nigeria, regime spokesman Amadou Abdramane said on state television.
The bid failed and “the main actors and some of the accomplices” were arrested, he added.
But a lawyers collective on behalf of Bazoum said it strongly rejected the “fabricated accusations” against him.
Bazoum, his wife and son are being “held incommunicado, without access to lawyers or the outside world”, Mohamed Seydou Diagne, coordinator of the collective, said in a statement sent to AFP in Abidjan.
On Friday, a doctor was refused access as he brought the family food, he added.
Being held “incommunicado”, the lawyer said, was “a new red line which has been crossed by a junta which continues to violate the fundamental rights of our client”.
Diagne said Bazoum’s entourage had not had any news from him since overnight Wednesday to Thursday.
The military rulers must provide proof that Bazoum and his family are “alive and well” and immediately release them, another lawyer in the collective, Reed Brody, said.
Last month, Bazoum’s lawyers said he had filed a legal case with a court of the Economic Community of West African States against those who deposed him.
