Gabon opposition leader jailed for 100 days

Gabon's main opposition leader, Alain Claude Bilie By Nze, has been in jail for more than three months after the ​government resurrected an 18-year-old private financial dispute as a pretext ‌to sideline him, his lawyers said in a statement.

Nze was serving as prime minister when Brice Oligui Nguema, Gabon's current president, took power in a coup in ​2023, and he unsuccessfully challenged Nguema in an election last ​year.

Nze's party, "Together for Gabon", reported on Nze's imprisonment on its ⁠Facebook page.

• Nze's lawyers said in a statement that he has spent ​100 days in "political and arbitrary" solitary confinement after being arrested on ​April 15. The basis for his arrest was a private dispute over about 7,600 euros ($8,650) dating to 2008, they said. His party said he was accused of fraud ​and breach of trust in that dispute.


• Nze has been confined to ​a five-square-metre cell without light at a prison in the capital, Libreville, his ‌lawyers ⁠said.


• His lawyers said that they have not been allowed to inspect case files and that the investigating judge has said he no longer has those documents. A Libreville appeals court rejected a defence request to annul ​proceedings on June ​2.


• Gabon's Justice Ministry did ⁠not respond to a request for comment.


• "A man is being held on the basis of a case ​file his defence has never been permitted to see," ​Nze’s counsel, ⁠Arthur Vercken, said in the statement.


• The August 2023 coup in Gabon ended the more than five-decade rule of Ali Bongo and his family. Nguema ⁠was elected president in ​a vote intended to return the oil-producing ​Central African country to civilian rule.

-Reuters