Officer who announced Burkina Faso coup released

Burkina Faso authorities have released Colonel Mamadou Bamba, the officer who announced last year’s abortive coup, a judicial source said.

Bamba announce the coup on September 17, on television saying the army had seized control from a transitional government which took office after former President Blaise Compaore fled on October 2014.

Bamba was not a member of Compaore’s presidential guard which was behind the putsch but was jailed along with coup leader Gilbert Diendere.

In all, 85 people have been charged with organising the coup and warrants have been issued for the arrest of a further ten. Around 40 suspects have been granted temporary release.

The military judiciary has meanwhile called for International Criminal Court (ICC) expert Hermann Kuenzel to analyse a recorded telephone conversation between the president of Ivory Coast’s national assembly Guillaume Soro and former Burkinabe foreign minister Djibril Bassole.

In the course if the conversation, Soro is understood to have implicitly given backing to the coup officers as they struggled to push through their operation which collapsed within days.

A warrant for the arrest of Soro brought relations between Abidjan and Ouagadougou to a low ebb and pursuit of the former rebel leader was scotched.

French expert, Norbert Pheulpin, brought in by Bassole’s defence team, said the recording was a splicing together of “three or four different phone conversations” between Soro and Bassole.

The military magistrate contacted also indicated Kuenzel would present his findings on October 27.