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 Major General Godefroid Niyombare was captured two days after
announcing Nkurunziza had been overthrown, presidential spokesman
Gervais Abayeho said.
"He has been arrested. He didn't surrender," Abayeho told Reuters.
Earlier, Abayeho had said three other generals had been arrested but
Niyombare was still on the run.
Asked what would happen to the plotters, Abayeho said it was up to
the justice system: "They will be held answerable."
Abayeho said the president was on his way to the capital Bujumbura
from his rural home province. Officials had said he arrived back in
Burundi on Thursday, returning from a summit in Tanzania.
Troops loyal to Nkurunziza appear to have succeeded in putting down
the coup on Thursday, when there was fighting and gunfire in the
streets of the capital.
The attempted overthrow of the president follows more than two weeks
of violent demonstrations by opponents who say Nkurunziza has
violated the constitution and a peace deal that ended civil war in
2005 by seeking a third five-year term.
"Protests to reject the third term bid for Nkurunziza will
continue," said Gordien Niyungeko, deputy head of Focode, one of the
300 civil society groups that backed protests. "Our movement had
nothing to do with the attempted coup."
A man with a gaping head wound lay dead in a street in Butarere, a
Bujumbura district that has been a hotbed for protests. Residents
said police had shot him and wounded two others. There was no
immediate police comment.
A group of young men in Bujumbura's Cibitoke suburb said they had
been warned by police that they would be treated as rebels and shot
at if they demonstrated.
Police had come to the neighborhood early in the morning, telling
them: "Now we are no longer looking for protesters, we are looking
for rebels," one of the group said.
Even before the coup attempt, officials had called protests an
"insurrection".
Burundi is facing its worst political crisis since the end of a war
a decade ago that pitted rebels groups from the majority Hutu
population, including one led by Nkurunziza, against an army then
led by minority Tutsis. The army is now ethnically mixed, having
absorbed former rebel groups.
During the past weeks of protests, police were often seen firing
live rounds at demonstrators. Activists say more than 20 people were
killed. Officials deny the police shot or killed demonstrators.
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So far, the battle in the capital has largely been driven by a
struggle for power, rather than explicitly ethnic rivalry. But
diplomats say the longer violence continues the more chance that old
ethnic wounds could be reopened.
More than 100,000 Burundians have fled to neighboring countries, a
reminder of the massive refugee crises that accompanied violence
between Tutsis and Hutus in both Burundi and neighboring Rwanda in
the 1990s and early 2000s.
After Thursday's heavy fighting for control of the state radio
headquarters and frequent gunfire, the streets of Bujumbura had been
quiet on Friday morning.
The constitution and a peace deal that ended the civil war both
specify a two-term presidential limit. But Nkurunziza is seeking a
third term anyway, relying on a court ruling that his first term
does not count because he was appointed by parliament, not elected.
His opponents and some donors have questioned the court's
impartiality.
The heavy-handed response of the police to demonstrations in recent
weeks has drawn stern rebukes from Western donors, who have urged
the president not to run again. The United States, which provides
training and equipment to the army, demanded a halt to "violent
force" by police.
Several African leaders had criticized Nkurunziza's bid for
re-election in the June 26 presidential vote. The African Union also
condemned any attempt to seize "power through violence".
The European Union, Belgium and the Netherlands have all suspended
some aid due to the unrest, particularly donations linked to the
elections, which alongside the presidential polls also include a
parliamentary race scheduled for May 26.
Opponents of the president and others had called for delay to the
elections, although they said a vote should be held by Aug. 26, when
Nkurunziza's current term runs out.
(Additional reporting by Edmund Blair in Nairobi; Writing by George
Obulutsa; Editing by Peter Graff)
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