The chief of staff of the Burkina Faso gendarmerie was dismissed on Wednesday October 4, a week after the arrest of four officers, including two of his former close collaborators, suspected of being involved in a “plot against the state security.” Lieutenant-Colonel Evrard Somda was replaced at the head of the national gendarmerie by Lieutenant-Colonel Kouagri Natama, according to a presidential decree consulted by AFP.
Until then commander of the first gendarmerie region, Kouagri Natama had previously led the departmental gendarmerie of Kaya (north), a region where the regiment of Captain Ibrahim Traoré was based, which seized power after a coup d’état on September 30, 2022.
Evrard Somda, former commander of special units of the national gendarmerie, had been in post since February 2022. A respected officer, he was weakened last week by the arrest of four officers, including two commanders of special units of the gendarmerie, suspected of being involved in a “plot against state security”, according to the transitional government.
On September 27, he claimed to have foiled “an attempted coup d’état” the day before, specifying that “officers and other actors presumed to be involved in this destabilization attempt [had] been arrested” and that others were “actively sought.” According to the government, the perpetrators of this attempted putsch “harbored the dark intention of attacking the institutions of the Republic and throwing the country into chaos.”
Assuring that it wanted to shed “all light on this plot”, the government regretted “that officers whose oath is to defend the homeland have erred in an enterprise of such a nature which aims to hinder the march of the Burkinabe people for their sovereignty and its total liberation from the terrorist hordes that attempt to enslave it.”
Since 2015, Burkina Faso has been confronted with jihadist violence attributed to armed movements affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS) group. This violence left more than 17,000 dead and more than 2 million internally displaced.