Former Burundian president arrested

BUJUMBURA, Burundi --Former President Domitien Ndayizeye was arrested in the capital Monday in connection with an alleged coup plot, Burundi's intelligence chief said.

Ndayizeye, now a senator after handing over power a year ago, was arrested in front of the Senate building, witnesses said. Police said he was being questioned by prosecutors.

He was president for just over two years in the transitional government formed in November 2001 after a series of peace deals to end Burundi's 12-year conflict.

State-owned radio reported earlier that his parliamentary immunity from prosecution was lifted Sunday in a decision by a panel made up of six senators.

An Associated Press reporter saw Ndayizeye with a prosecutor taken into police custody. No charges have been filed so far.

"His arrest is linked to the coup plot," intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Adolphe Nshimirimana told The Associated Press. "He is on the list of coup plotters to be arrested."

On Aug. 1-2, authorities arrested nine other people, including former Vice President Alphonse Kadege, as part of the investigation. Arrest warrants have been issued for two former aides to Ndayizeye, and police were searching for them, Chief Prosecutor Jean Bosco Dnikumana has said.

It was unclear if the arrests were linked to March statements by President Pierre Nkurunziza, in which he said the government had uncovered an alleged coup plot, and that three army officers and two police officers were involved. He said the government had an audio tape on which three civilians are heard plotting to overthrow it.

The government has said nothing else about an alleged plot since then.

Nkurunziza was elected in 2005 as part of a Hutu-dominated government to replace the power-sharing government under Ndayizeye, which oversaw Burundi's postwar transition and establishment of a new constitution.

Burundi's conflict was between the majority Hutus and minority Tutsis, who had dominated the government, economy and military since the central African country's independence from Belgium in 1962.

More than 250,000 people, most of them civilians, died in the conflict, mainly from conflict-induced disease and hunger. The war started in October 1993, when Tutsi paratroopers assassinated the country's first democratically elected president, a Hutu.