At around lunch time on July 22, 2016, Jean Bigirimana, a reporter with the independent news outlet Iwacu, left his home in Burundi’s largest city, Bujumbura, after receiving a call from a source with the national intelligence service. He has been missing ever since.
A woman who identified herself as Bigirimana’s friend phoned Iwacu and said the journalist had been arrested by National Intelligence Service (SNR) agents in Bugarama town, about 50 kilometers south of Bujumbura, and taken to the agency’s Muramvya headquarters, about 50 kilometers east of Bujumbura, Iwacu reported.
In a 2021 interview with CPJ to mark the fifth anniversary of Bigirimana’s disappearance, Iwacu’s editor-in-chief Abbas Mbazumutima provided more detail, adding that the woman said his colleague, who had only joined Iwacu a few weeks earlier, had been “carted off in a pick-up truck with tinted windows.”
The source who called Bigirimana on the day he went missing was an intelligence informant, Abel Ahishakiye, who also disappeared in August 2016, ahead of a meeting scheduled with the Iwacu team, according to Mbazumutima and the local outlet SOS Médias Burundi.
Mbazumutima told CPJ that he believed an incident involving the journalist’s previous employer, pro-government Rema FM, may have been a factor in his disappearance.
Bigirimana had confided in Mbazumutima that he feared for his safety after suspected affiliates of the ruling CNDD-FDD party’s youth wing, the Imbonerakure, accused him of conspiring to attack Rema FM. The group has faced allegations of torturing, disappearing, and killing opposition activists, a charge denied by the government.
In May 2015, Rema FM was one of at least five radio stations attacked during weeks of unrest that followed President Pierre Nkurunziza’s announcement of plans for a third term. The news precipitated an attempted coup, clashes, and hundreds of deaths, particularly of those seen as pro-opposition.
Mbazumutima said Bigirimana’s accusers implicated him in the Rema FM attack because he was related to former presidential spokesperson Léonidas Hatungimana, who was one of about 30 people sentenced to life in prison in absentia in 2021 for their alleged role in the attempted coup, according to a court document, reviewed by CPJ.
Exiled Hatungimana told CPJ via messaging app in 2021 that he was unjustly convicted. He confirmed that Bigirimana was his nephew and that he knew the journalist felt unsafe though he did not have details of the possible threats against him.
At least 100 journalists fled Burundi in the year after April 2015, CPJ reported.
Violence escalated after Nkurunziza returned to power in July 2015 in a disputed presidential election, Human Rights Watch said, as it documented the abduction, arrest, torture, and killing of civil society activists, journalists, and suspected opponents by government forces and armed opposition groups.
“Whereas dead bodies on the streets of Bujumbura were a daily occurrence in the second half of 2015, many abuses are now taking place under the radar, with security forces secretly taking people away and refusing to account for them,” the group said in February 2016.
In his interview with CPJ, Bigirimana’s colleague, Mbazumutima, said that Bigirimana was so scared before joining Iwacu that he fled into a self-imposed “internal exile” in rural Bujumbura.
At the time of Bigirimana’s disappearance, concerns were noted about his visit to Rwanda, a few weeks earlier, to attend a journalism training course. The Associated Press (AP) reported that Iwacu’s director, Antoine Kaburahe, who Burundi’s government wanted to be extradited from Belgium over charges he played a role in the 2015 coup attempt, was also on the course. The then-editor-in-chief of Iwacu, Leandre Sikuyavuga, also told Africanews in August 2016 that Bigirimana interviewed exiled Burundian journalists in Rwanda.
On July 27, 2016, Bigirimana’s wife, Godeberthe Hakizimana, told the AP that his family believed he had been arrested and feared he was dead after searching Muramvya Province’s jails. CPJ was unable to independently confirm whether Bigirimana was arrested. The police and intelligence services told Iwacu that he was not in their custody.
On August 3, Iwacu reported that unnamed sources said Bigirimana was being held at an intelligence facility in Muramvya Province and “has been extremely beaten and is starving.”
On August 5, Jean-Baptiste Baribonekeza, the then-president of Burundi’s National Independent Commission on Human Rights (CNIDH), told a news conference that a CNIDH delegation had visited the area where the journalist was allegedly detained but had not found him or an intelligence detention facility in Muramvya and had no information about his whereabouts, Iwacu reported.
"He called me to say the commission is still verifying information," Kaburahe said.
Iwacu accused CNIDH, which has faced criticism from rights groups over its lack of independence, of “extreme passivity.”
After Iwacu was told a body was floating in the water near the site of Bigirimana’s disappearance, an investigation team, including CNIDH, police, and intelligence agents, searched the Mubarazi River on August 5, but they found nothing, Mbazumutima told CPJ in the 2021 interview.
On August 7, Iwacu journalists found and photographed a body “blocked by stones in a river” after obtaining “some information gathered secretly,” Iwacu reported on August 11.
On August 9, Iwacu, CNIDH, police and intelligence agents returned to confirm the discovery of the first body and found a second corpse, also tied up and decaying. One had been decapitated.
On August 16, the two bodies were buried by officials in Muramvya cemetery after Bigirimana’s wife, Hakizimana, viewed them and said neither was her husband, Iwacu reported. The outlet expressed frustration that CNIDH ignored its calls for “scientific identification” of the bodies via DNA testing and filed a complaint with the public prosecutor’s office to push for justice.
In 2017, Hakizimana and her sons fled to Rwanda after receiving death threats. She has subsequently called for DNA testing of the two bodies, telling Iwacu in 2021 that she was “in shock” when asked to identify the headless corpse.
Bigirimana graduated from law school and then worked at Rema FM from 2011 until 2015, when the station was attacked and closed temporarily, and he joined Infos Grands Lacs, Iwacu reported.
On July 22, 2021, the fifth anniversary of the journalist’s disappearance, Iwacu said that it was told by the public prosecutor’s office spokesperson that investigations into Bigirimana’s case were still ongoing.
On July 29, 2016, the then-National Council of Communication President Karenga Ramadhan told CPJ via messaging app that his deputy would respond, but CPJ received no further communication. In late 2016, police spokesman Pierre Nkurikiye and CNIDH’s Baribonekeza did not return CPJ’s calls seeking comment and calls to information minister Nestor Bankumukunzi went unanswered.
In July 2026, Iwacu’s publication director Sikuyavuga told CPJ that for the past decade Iwacu had repeatedly called on the police and judicial authorities to establish what happened to Bigirimana and to identify those responsible for his disappearance.
He said that a criminal complaint was filed for the police to investigate, adding that the investigation was still open even though the authorities had not given updates.
“Ten years is far too long for Jean’s family, colleagues, and the public to be left without answers. We continue to demand a thorough, impartial, and transparent investigation that establishes the truth and ensures accountability,” said Sikuyavuga.
In July 2026, government spokesperson Jérôme Niyonzima advised CPJ to seek comment from the Prosecutor General’s Office. CPJ's calls and text messages requesting comment from Prosecutor General Rose Nkorerimana and interior ministry spokesperson Pierre Nkurikiye did not receive any replies.