A well-known lawyer and civil society activist in Burkina Faso has been abducted hours after being released from jail.
Several kidnappings of persons considered opposed to the West African nation's military administration, commanded by Captain Ibrahim Traore, have occurred in the city of Ouagadougou in recent months.
"National security agents had left Guy Herve Kam on open land not far from his home and immediately another group of armed men took him to an unknown destination" on Wednesday night, said Mouvement Sens, for which Kam is the national coordinator.
Did you read this?
"We do not know the reasons why our coordinator was not returned directly to his family at his own house, and even less why he was re-taken by force by a second group waiting in ambush," Sens said in a statement.
Burkina's Bar Association released a statement saying that after his apparent abduction, Kam on Thursday appeared before a military judge who ordered him held.
According to a statement made by Burkina's Bar Association, Kam went before a military tribunal on Thursday following his suspected kidnapping and was ordered to be held.
"Guy Herve Kam was driven to the Army detention and correctional centre (MACA), where he has been incarcerated since Thursday", the association said in a statement.
A decorated army soldier was also kidnapped on Wednesday, a day after being released on accusations of seeking to destabilize the West African nation, according to his relatives.
On Tuesday, a military tribunal granted Lieutenant-Colonel Emmanuel Zoungrana, 42, preliminary permission to return home.
Sens blamed Kam's kidnapping on the country's top leaders.
"The authorities' fury" against Kam "fully shows that we live in a state where arbitrariness and the power of guns are what we have now for law and legitimacy", Sens said.
