On the night of August 29, 2023, a few hours before the coup d'état in Gabon, Noureddin and Sylvia were successively forcibly abducted by the soldiers of the putschist junta, from their respective homes and in front of their families.

​Accused of serious charges of which they would only learn much later, they were then detained in a semblance of a legal framework, deprived of their most fundamental rights of access to the defense or communication with their loved ones, themselves taken hostage by the military.

 

A defamatory campaign in the state press and on social networks based on false stagings of Noureddin and Sylvia led to their categorical condemnation by public opinion, in defiance of the presumption of innocence.

 

Locked up in inhumane conditions, they are victims of inhumane, cruel and degrading acts aimed at the illegal and opaque seizure of their personal assets, without any court decision ordering it.

 

Since April 1, 2024, Noureddin and Sylvia have been detained outside the prison system, in a military office in the basement of the Presidential Palace, without seeing the light of day and without outside contact, in the very place where they were tortured and in the hands of their torturers.

 

Officially held in pre-trial detention, this is systematically renewed without a judicial debate and even though their lawyers denounce the absence of incriminating evidence in their case file, the lack of progress on the legal front and the absence of any prospect of a fair and equitable trial, which is moreover compromised in advance.

 

Their alarming physical and mental health reflects the urgency of freeing them from this inhumane situation devoid of any justice.