Gabon: Former President Free to Travel Abroad, Junta Says

Cia Pak / UN Photo
Ali Bongo Ondimba, President of the Gabonese Republic, addresses the general debate of the General Assembly’s seventy-seventh session in 2022.
7 September 2023
allAfrica.com

Cape Town — Gabon’s former president, Ali Bongo Ondimba, has been released, the military junta ruling the country has said.

Al Jazeera reports that Bongo, who had been held under house arrest since a military coup on August 30, was removed from power shortly after he was declared the winner of much-criticised elections..

“Given his state of health, the former President of the Republic Ali Bongo Ondimba is free to move about. He may, if he wishes, travel abroad for medical checkups,” Gabon’s military spokesman Colonel Ulrich Manfoumbi said in a statement read on national television on Wednesday evening (September 6, 2023).

The statement announcing Bongo’s release from house arrest was signed by General Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema, who was sworn in as Gabon’s new head of state on Monday.

Oligui is a cousin of Bongo.

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