A legal case against the coup leaders who toppled Niger’s democratically elected president is being prepared by his lawyers, according to a statement released on Monday.
The lawyers said they would file the case in a court in Niamey, the capital, against General Abdourahamane Tiani, who seized power on July 26, and “all others” involved in the coup. They also said they would appeal to two bodies of the UN Human Rights Council, including its working group on arbitrary detention.
The case accuses the coup leaders of “attack and conspiracy against state authority, crimes and offenses committed by civil servants and arbitrary arrests and confinements.”
The statement said the coup was “an infringement on the dignity of the Nigerien state” and called for the restoration of the rule of law.
The ousted president, Mohamed Bazoum, has been under house arrest since the coup. He had already filed a lawsuit with a court of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on September 18, his Senegalese lawyer Seydou Diagne said.
The coup leaders have said they would charge Bazoum with “high treason.”
