From Reuters...
(See also a story from about a month ago concerning an earlier batch of released prisoners.)
Burundi freed a final batch of 1,846 political prisoners on Tuesday, including some accused of involvement in ethnic massacres and the assassination of the president in 1993.
Human rights activists, including the largest group Ligue Iteka, said they wanted the constitutional court to cancel the releases arguing it was against Burundi's constitution and international law to free detainees charged with murder.
Some 1,453 prisoners were released in January and February as part of a plan by President Pierre Nkurunziza to free all prisoners accused of politically-motivated crimes during the tiny central African nation's civil war.
All prisoners released will be investigated by a yet-to-be-established truth and reconciliation commission and could return to jail on that body's recommendation.
"The detainees freed today are in four groups," Justice Minister Clotilde Niragira said. "There is a first group of 1,810 prisoners accused of 1993 ethnic reprisals that followed the assassination of President (Melchior) Ndadaye."
The other groups included soldiers involved in the killing of Ndadaye, people who participated in Tutsi militia groups and some young people accused of wanting to start a Tutsi rebellion, the minister added to reporters.
The assassination of Ndadaye, a Hutu, by Tutsi soldiers in an attempted coup after Burundi's first multiparty elections in 1993 plunged the country into a 12-year civil war along ethnic lines that killed over 300,000 people.
More than 9,000 former soldiers and political figures were later arrested and imprisoned for their roles in the war.
After a U.N.-backed peace process, Nkrunziza, a former Hutu rebel leader, was voted in as president last year and vowed to make reconciliation his priority.
Niragira said the detainees released on Tuesday were recognised as political prisoners by a commission comprised of politicians and magistrates.
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