Inhumane conditions - Arbitrary detention - Extortion - Tortures - Illegal arrests - Fabrication of evidence - Incommunicado - Secret detention
625
12
36
41
DAYS
HOURS
MINUTES
SECONDS
Of arbitrary detention and tortures
Interview
Almost a year after her release, Sylvia Bongo breaks her silence and tells France 24 the behind-the-scenes story of the coup: detention, torture, dispossession… and a mother’s anguish in the face of her son’s suffering.
She is now continuing her fight to ensure that the truth is heard by international courts.
#FREENOUREDDINANDSYLVIA
Sylvia and Noureddin Bongo are French/Gabonese citizens who have been illegally detained and regularly tortured for almost two years in the central African nation of Gabon.
Their "crime" is to be related to the outgoing President, who was deposed in a coup d’état on August 29, 2023.
Unwilling to directly attack the former president, the new regime has instead chosen to target his family and have kidnapped and illegally held Noureddin and Sylvia despite them holding no formal political office at the time of their arrest.
The military junta has falsely accused them to legitimise their putsch, detained them with no legal right, deprived them of contact with relatives or a trial, and has regularly tortured them and held them in the most inhumane conditions.
No wife or son should be used in such a way to punish their husband or father. Sylvia’s and Noureddin’s health is now critical. They have no legal case to answer.
We beg for their release before they could die in detention.
-
Electrocuted
-
Water torture
-
Beaten with hammers
-
Whipped with pipes
-
Strangled and punched
-
Assaulted with a crowbar
-
Deprived of daylight
-
Solitary confinement
-
Food deprivation
-
Deprived family or lawyers
#What They Face.
Neither Sylvia nor Noureddin held political office at the time of their arrest.
For almost two years they have been held on fake charges with no trial date and have experienced the most inhumane treatment that no one, whatever their family
or background, should ever have to endure.
Their suffering has routinely includedbeing:
#Crimes Against Humanity
“We saw people who were deeply traumatized.
As for Noureddin Bongo, I was able to see on his chest the marks of the electric shocks that I had seen at other times and in other
places.(...)"
Mr François Zimeray, Human Rights Lawyer, former Human Rights Ambassador in Paris, former French Ambassador on the first and only visit granted to his clients after 17 months of detention.
