Four Suspected Coup Plotters Arrested In Burkina Faso After Failed Coup

Four officers have reportedly been detained for questioning in Burkina Faso after a failed coup attempt.

This was made known on Thursday, barely 24 hours after the country’s military government announced that it has thwarted a coup attempt.

The four are suspected of involvement in a “conspiracy against state security,”Ahmed Ferdinand Sountoura, military prosecutor said in a statement seen by AFP on Thursday.

Two others are “on the run,” the statement said.

Late Wednesday, the junta said the intelligence and security services have foiled a coup attempt the previous day.

It came nearly a year to the day since junta leader Captain Ibrahim Traore seized power in the West African country on September 30, 2022.

His takeover was the country’s second coup in eight months — both triggered in part by discontent at failures to stem a raging jihadist insurgency which swept in from neighbouring Mali in 2015.

According to reports, on late Tuesday, thousands of people took to the streets of the capital Ouagadougou following a call from Traore supporters to “defend” him amid rumours of a coup on social media.

Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in West Africa that covers an area of around 274,200 square kilometres and is bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the south, and the Ivory Coast to the southwest.