Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.

Former Burundian intelligence agents say that the country’s security services are running secret torture and detention sites to silence dissent. 

 one house in particular, which was filmed in a video posted on social media in 2016. A red liquid, which looked like blood, was seen pouring from its gutter.

We ask: has Burundi’s repression of opponents now gone underground? The government has always denied any human rights violations, and declined to comment for this report.

december 2016- a video is widely shared by burundian social media accounts.

it shows red  liquid flowing from the gutter of a privat  property

those  who posted it pseculatedthat the liquid might be blood.

some asked if the house wasbeing  used by burundi’s fared inteligence services. the government imediatelly  denied that this hosue -or any other – had everbeen used  as a torture facility .

BBC Africa Eye has been lookig closeley at this house , and asking some critical questions

hwo lived here?

did people die here?, and is the burundian government running secret torture facilitites to silence dissent?

Kamwe Kamwe:

Inside Burundi’s Killing Machine

the streets of the cpital-Bujumbura- in  2015

burundi is a tiny country in the grat lakes  region of africa

it shot into he headlines when president pierre Nkurunzizadecided to run for a third term in office.

people tool to the streets claiming hewas violating the costitution.

peaceful protests soon turnet violent

hundreds were killed .

these images were fimled when the BBC could still report freely

on Burundi’s troubles.

but there was a brutal crackdown on local independent media

foreign journalists were denied visas 

and special instructions were left at a  border,refusing entry to a BBC team.

faced with these restricitons ,BBC Africa Eye  decided to examine some of the social media images that have been trickling out  of brurundi in recent years.

the government likes to portray burundi as a coutnry now at peace ,but these clips  tell a different story .in this video , members of the imonerakure , the ruling party’s  youth wing chant songs about rape.

here , supporters sing about burning opponents.

other posts show dead bodies floating  in lakes and rivers.

the video of the red liquid was aong the most  distubing , and it contained some information.

it was  posted on social media with an address: 76 avenue Ntwarante

it is here , in kinindo , a quiet  residential neighourhood of bujumbura

 the house owner: prosper kaze  ,his  anacive member of the opposition who no longer live in  burundi .and he regocnised his property in the video

it’s a place he grew up  . it’s the house proser gre up in , and to which hetook his own children to sepnd time with their  grandparents. his family left the country and abandoned the property in 2015 ,at the height of  the protests.

 in november  that year , pictures showing  what looked like the same house beind  raided by security  forces emerged on social media.

a journalist was also at the scene and gave  these  images.

the security forces said they were reclaiming  the property from rebels.

prosper’s house was now in the hands of burundi’s authorities 

but what did they do wiht hit?

and why , one year later , was red liquide flowing from its guttere?

after months of searching  -a man who claimed to know the property  and what happened here. we call him ” nathan “.

he drew a sketch of it for us , which proved that he really was familiar with the layout 

nathan says he worked as guard for a man called alexis Ndayikengurukiye- known  Nkoroka.

this is Nkoroka, his  is the deputy  head of nterior security  for burundiss intelligence service and  is accussed by local human rights activitists of running  secret  detention centres across the country.

normally Nkoroka  does not kill but he orders,  he tesll you ” work”.

you do what he orders you to do.

how many  peaple was in the house ?

 nathan don’t remember the exact number but in the detanee’s room and in the other room  there were  around 20  people.

Nkoroka was the one in charge of the house,  so sometimes  he would get them out interrogate and beat them up in the living room.

the detainess were made to lie down and  the chairs were on the other side.

nathan  can’t tell if they were beaten one by one .all he’s know that they were screaming.

one of he men who entered that living room  and faced Nkoroka’s interrogation

we call him pierre.

pierre was accused of involvement in the protests.he was tortured ,but later escaped and fled the country.when he was inside  he was like someone  who is already dead .he did not think he would  ever get out .

now that he is  far away , he starting to forget  but what keeeps coming back to him are the screams that he heard over there .

pierre’s is the most detailed and shocking account of how  Nkoroka allegedly dealt with those  suspected of opposing the government.

if they wanted to question someone they would call him and they would approach the chief and kneel  before him ….so they would be in line somehere here and they will call them one by one.

each case was different.but if theywere not satisfied with your answer they would torture you . you would hand them your hands and they would beat them witch electric cables.

also , they would cane you under the feet while  yoi were kneeling

pierre  recall one of the cables that had many wires inside , witha black rubber cover, that was the one the chief used to walk around with.

a black rubber calbe enclosing  many wires that he would beat you yp with if he was not satified with your answers.

in december 2016 , pierre  heard something worse than the regular  beatings, two people he said , tried to escape from the house , and the guards chased after them

pierre cold hear poeple  shouting and saying : get those dogs , don’t let them esacape or you will suffer  consequences.”

when they finally caught them ,pierre  could hear them screaming in a way that suggested that  they were being killed …or being inflicted excruciating pain.

they did not  come back in the house after  and given the words   pierre could hear ,he think they were killed .

it was ot just the screaming that  made pierre think the detainees had been killed. he also says he heard the chief – Nkoroka  talking a bout body bags.

then that day he said bring   sacks and stuff  in those dogs and load them in the car,that is why  pierre think people wer killed there before because those  bags were  used to carry corpses.

pierre didn’t see any of this,he was locked in a room ,listening to the terrifying sound of men screaming outside,but  at around the same time – just before the video of the red liqquid began to circulate  , the guard -nathan the guard , saw  a killing with his own eye.

his account striking similarities to pierre’s testimony.

he desceibes three men being brought into the house, hey were tall , one of them especially big.

during the time of that blood they had brought three men and had put them in that room over there.

the next night  an intelligence agent came and took them out of their detention room.

that was Nkoroka, he order his  guards to beheaded them.

at that point one of the guys , who was a tough man , tried to forge ahead and escape .

according to nathan , the escapee was caught and killed inside the main gate.

he said the  guards carriedthe body back into the livingroom , where the other two prisoners head already been beheaded with knives.

then they brough sacks to stufftheir corpses in. nathan says we  tied the sacks , then we took a new tent and laid t in the cargo area of the car ,loaded the corpses in the car and covered them with a  tent and they drove off.

nathan says  the bodies were carried away in sacks , but the  blood of the three men ramained and the driveway   and had to be cleaned up.

oif that blood was coming from the house  it was from the kids  bathroom.

prosper -who built the sewage system for this house -says that if it had been poured  into this  bathroom drain….it would have flowed  into this gutter

-the same gutter

seen in the video  posted on december 28 th,it s impossible to be 100 %  sure that this liquid is the blood of the three men 

Nathan described but  nathan  did confirme that pierre – the prisoner who says he heard men being killed  – was  also held captive at 76  avenut Ntwarante at the time of the alleged killings.

we been looking at this hous in burundi’s  captial bujumbura, and asking  if it was used as a torture  facility by the government. but what  does it tell us about the bigger picture?

to understand the orgins of the current violence, we need to go back in time.

between 1993 and the early 2000s there was a civil wae in burundi the conflict pitted the Tutsi minority , who had held power for many years ,against the Hutu  majority.

the war ended when Nelson Mandella brokered a peace deal , laying out the terms for a power sharing agreement.

the agreement also said that no president a could  hold power for mor than two terms it laid the foundations for a decade of peace and stability.

but when pierre Nkurunziza decided to run  again , many said he was violating the peace  deal  a charge the president has always denied.

thoousands ,both Hutu and Tutsi , took to the streets 

-and in response . the regime mobilized its security apparatus to suppress dissent.

today,some believe that those in charge are trying to turn the two ethnic groups against  each other- to deflect attention away from Nkurunziza’s attempts to stay in power .

a low -ranking intelligence agent- ‘john’ who worked with the government until he fled the country  2016

he admitted to killing people during the time of the protests , and said that the crackdown was directed at reas heavily populated by Tutsis.

 ‘john’ – not many Tutsis worked with us we were almost all Hutus and those we killed came from neighborhoods where there were very few Hutus …before  ordering us to kill ,they told us “Tutsis do not want  us to rule. but later on we came to realise that hey had lied to us “

according to the former insiders  the crackdown of 2015  has now turned into  a wiet , ochetrated program to eliminate opposition.

prosper’s house is not the only site that has reporedly been used as a secret detention centre  for political prisoners.

at leat 21  other torture loctations have been reporterd  by victims  and intelligence agents to the UN, to the civil society organisation Ndondeza and to the BBC , in  these areas  of  these areas  .

of these 21, we have been able to locate 8 sites in the capital with precision

including muha military  camp.

the national inteligence agency  headquarters

the basement of the ruling party  headquarters.

containers in the yeard of the national water and electricity provider’s building in kigobe

and the headqaurters of the police  unit  in charge of protecing the country’s institutions .

this is where former president mechior Ndadaye was buried.there has been a police position  next to his tomb for years 

but between spetember and november 2015  a new structure appeared and  our sources say it became a base for an anti-riot brigade.

the troops are visible here.they were deployed to suppress the protests in 2015, and were accused  of using the containers in the yard as detention and torture sites.

a victim told  that he was  interrogated in this pink house  in the suburb of mutakura om 2016 it’s a former  bakery abandoned by its owner during the protests  .

the victim told the BBC that liquide  was injected into his stomach.

a former intelligence agent told the BBC that he saw people beng killed in a bar

called IwaboWa’bantu.

it belonged to the now deceased head of intelligence, adolphr Nshimirimana.

our sours told – the killers would blast loud music to cover  the  screams .

loca l human rights groups confirm that political violence is still happening.

the reports coming out  of burundi, they indicate that althoug fewer deaths are reported more and more people are going missing or being tortured  and that these incidents are now spread   right across the country .

we put the allegations cotained in this film to the burundian authorities and to  alexis Ndayikengurukiye- Nkuroka – directly BBC have not received any formar responce.

president pierre Nkurunziza and his government have always denied involvement in human rights violations.

but several of the sources BBC spoke to , including former government insiders ,believe that this  alleged programme of detention  and torture  has been approved at the highest levels.

‘john ‘ ” this was organized in closed circles, this  is a secret that was known by very high- ranking officials.what i am telling you , the president knew because he was given reports”

put these allegations to the president’s offcie .BBC  received no response.

the protests of 2015 have disappeared from the streets of bujumbura  , as have the journalists who covered them

but it would be a mistake – sayts one former intelligence agent -to think that burundi is now  at peace.

” some people  think that the country is safe  now , i want to tell you this : this small respite is for them the best time to carry out the killings without anyone noticing it.

this is a man we will call martin– he worked for the regime and fled the coutry in 2018 because he feared for his life .

” let me repeat this ,they have long lists of people to be killed,thay have lists of army elements, police officers and civil servants who are to be killed, because they are believed to be dissidents or people who are believed to not support the rulling party enough

 they have  chanched their operating mode : the cars ,the body bags ,the tents and the agents that they se in their new system, at the moment thecountry is silent , but people continue to die and there willbe no one left.”

by asking questins about what happened in this house

we have found disturbing  evidence thar burundi’s government is sstill eliminating opposition to its rule 

multiple witnesses have told about a hidden but systmatic programme of torture  and killing.

local dissidents have a name  for this -they call it” kamwe kamwe” one by one