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- Promptly investigate SNR arrest and detention practices, including their compliance with Burundian and international human rights law, and prosecute all cases of serious violations by SNR agents, whatever their rank.
- Amend the law establishing the SNR to define its powers more clearly and increase judicial supervision over the activities of regular and irregular agents of the SNR.
- Create a standing parliamentary committee for security and intelligence affairs that will exercise civilian oversight over the SNR.
- Take all necessary measures—such as through public statements, training programs and disciplinary actions and criminal prosecution—to ensure that SNR agents act in accordance with Burundian law and international human rights law.
- Revise the criminal code to ensure that all acts of torture are offenses under the criminal law.
- Close SNR detention facilities. Transfer all those detained to a regularly constituted detention facility and have them brought before an independent tribunal to have the lawfulness of their detention reviewed.
- Until SNR detention facilities are shut down, allow officers of the Prosecutor’s office, United Nations Operation in Burundi (ONUB) human rights officers, and representatives of human rights organizations access to them and to meet privately with all detainees.
- Ensure that the SNR does not distribute weapons to any civilians, including demobilized combatants.
- Institute a witness protection program to ensure that all witnesses and members of their families who testify in cases involving SNR agents are fully protected from harm and threats of harm. Discipline or prosecute as appropriate those officials implicated in threatening or harming witnesses and their families.
- Ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
Urge the Burundian government to investigate fully the cases documented in this report, to report publicly on such investigations, to prosecute any agents of the SNR suspected of such crimes, and to ensure future compliance of SNR and other state agents with international human rights law.
Urge the Burundian government to provide unhindered access to the detention facilities of the SNR for ONUB human rights officers and human rights groups.
To the United Nations Operation in Burundi
- Continue to investigate and denounce violations of international human rights law and Burundian national law by agents of the SNR, and to share results of investigations with relevant Burundian officials and make findings public.
- Ensure that the mandate of the Human Rights Section of the future Integrated United Nations Mission for Burundi (Bureau Intégré des Nations Unies au Burundi, BINUB) includes investigating and monitoring violations of international human rights law.
- Ensure that BINUB has sufficient personnel and resources from the start of its mandate on January 1, 2007, to carry out effective monitoring of human rights violations.
October 2006
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