Former Gabonese president Ali Bongo Ondimba, who has been under house arrest in Libreville since the coup d’état in August 2023, arrived in Angola on Thursday night (16 May 2025) with his wife and son, the Angolan presidency announced. At a press briefing held the same day at the public prosecutor’s office of the Libreville Court of Judicial Appeal, the judicial authorities announced the provisional release of Sylvia Bongo and Noureddine Bongo Valentin. Eddy Minang, the public prosecutor, said that the decision had been taken on 14 May because the defendants’ state of health was incompatible with a prison environment.
The CS-DVI bomber, sent by President João Lourenço, landed in Luanda on the night of 15 to 16 May 2025 with former president Ali Bongo Ondimba, his wife Sylvia Bongo Ondimba and their son Noureddine on board. Eddy Minang, Public Prosecutor at the Libreville Court of Judicial Appeal, had been expected to comment on the matter since last week, but following a press release from the Angolan presidency he indicated that the Bongo family were indeed on Angolan soil. He added that the release of Sylvia and Noureddine Bongo was provisional and that their release ‘in no way interrupts the normal course of the proceedings, which will continue until a fair, transparent and equitable trial is held within a reasonable time’.
« On 12 May 2025, Ms Gisèle Eyué Bekalé, a lawyer at the Gabonese bar, sent the public prosecutor a request for provisional release on behalf of Sylvie Marie Aimé Valentin épouse Bongo and Noureddine Bongo Valentin. In this letter, she stated that her clients’ state of health was worrying, and produced medical certificates issued by the prison’s chief medical officer and by General Jean-Raymond Nzenze of the Omar Bongo Ondimba Armed Forces Training Hospital. On Wednesday 14 May 2025, the first specialised indictment chamber granted them provisional release, notably because their state of health had become incompatible with the prison environment, according to their attending physician ».
Eddy Minang, Public Prosecutor at the Libreville Court of Appeal – Gabon
The release of the Bongo family follows the official visit by João Lourenço, the Angolan president and current chairman of the African Union, on 12 May. Former first lady Sylvia Bongo and her son Noureddin Bongo had been arrested and held virtually incommunicado for more than a year following the coup that toppled Ali Bongo Ondimba’s regime on the night of 29-30 August 2023.
‘I would like to point out that freedom is the principle and detention the exception, and that this provisional release, which was ordered for medical reasons, is in strict compliance with the provisions of articles 132 and 143 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Finally, I would like to make it clear that this measure, this decision to grant provisional release, in no way interrupts the normal course of the proceedings, which will continue until a fair, transparent and equitable trial is held within a reasonable timeframe.’
Eddy Minang, Public Prosecutor at the Libreville Court of Appeal – Gabon
In Gabon, the decision to hold a trial without the main defendants could prove controversial. In his election promises, President Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema had promised in an interview that there would be a trial for Sylvie Bongo and Noureddine Bongo. In particular, he stated that the courts had ‘proof’ that it was Ali Bongo’s wife who signed documents after the former head of state suffered a stroke. For observers, however, this exile is not random. On 30 April, two weeks after the election of Brice Oligui Nguema, the African Union lifted the sanctions that had been imposed on Gabon for two years. The country was reintegrated into the institution, but at the same time the AU adopted a resolution demanding the release of the Bongo family.
