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