Nairobi — Burkina Faso authorities should credibly and independently investigate alleged extrajudicial executions of 12 men detained by gendarmes on May 11, 2020 during a counterterrorism operation near the eastern town of Fada N'Gourma, Human Rights Watch said today.
A community leader who investigated the incident said, "People living around the Tanwalbougou gendarmerie told me they saw the gendarmes and a few VDF returning to the base with many detainees around 4 p.m."
"I lost two brothers that day," one man said.
While the government statement did not speculate on the deaths of the 12 men, family members and witnesses who retrieved the bodies from the morgue in Fada N'gouroma and participated in the burials, said they believed the men had been shot in the head.
"The gendarme post of Tanwalbougou is directly under the command of the regional capital, Fada N'Gourma, tasked with the investigation," said a family member.
Community leaders and CISC said numerous Peuhl men from villages around Tanwalbougou had in recent months been executed or forcibly disappeared after their arrest by local gendarmes and noted that victims would be too frightened to respond to judicial summons by local gendarmes.
