State prosecutor Sylvestre Nyandwi said Saturday that, having “learned of (other) people who may have been implicated in the coup … we have decided to open a dossier into them and four were arrested this morning.”
“We consider they are among those behind the assassination of the president,” said Nyandwi.
The four detained are general Celestin Ndayisaba and colonels Gabriel Gunungu, Laurent Niyonkuru and Anicet Nahigombeye.
A 1998 prosecution found a dozen officers guilty of involvement in the killing, but the highest-ranking was a lieutenant.
A judicial source said the four detained had been questioned in Bujumbura and jailed. Another source said police had sought to arrest at least three other retired Tutsi officers but found they were not at home.
The wife of one of the four arrested said her husband had been hauled out in the early hours by “dozens of heavily-armed police”. She slammed the detentions as “purely political”.