Gabon opposition leader jailed for political reasons, his lawyers say

LIBREVILLE, July 24 - Gabon's main opposition leader, Alain Claude Bilie By Nze, has been in jail for more than three months after the government resurrected an 18-year-old private financial dispute as a pretext to sideline him, his lawyers said in a statement.

Nze was serving as prime minister when Brice Oligui Nguema, Gabon's current president, took power in a coup in 2023, and he unsuccessfully challenged Nguema in an election last year.

Nze's party, "Together for Gabon", reported on Nze's imprisonment on its Facebook page.

• Nze's lawyers said in a statement that he has spent 100 days in "political and arbitrary" solitary confinement after being arrested on April 15. The basis for his arrest was a private dispute over about 7,600 euros ($8,650) dating to 2008, they said. His party said he was accused of fraud and breach of trust in that dispute.

• Nze has been confined to a five-square-metre cell without light at a prison in the capital, Libreville, his lawyers said.

• His lawyers said that they have not been allowed to inspect case files and that the investigating judge has said he no longer has those documents. A Libreville appeals court rejected a defence request to annul proceedings on June 2.

• Gabon's Justice Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

• "A man is being held on the basis of a case file his defence has never been permitted to see," Nze’s counsel, Arthur Vercken, said in the statement.

• The August 2023 coup in Gabon ended the more than five-decade rule of Ali Bongo and his family. Nguema was elected president in a vote intended to return the oil-producing Central African country to civilian rule. ($1 = 0.8785 euros) REUTERS