Sylvia Bongo, the wife of former Gabonese President Ali Bongo , gave an interview to the television channel France 24 on Friday, March 6. In the interview, she recounts her "ordeal" in Gabon .

"(On August 30, 2023), around 3 a.m., the results were announced and 5 minutes after declaring my husband the winner, my aide-de-camp entered with a pistol (accompanied) by armed and hooded men, to come and get me," said the former first lady of Gabon.

"They told me: 'If you don't give us your bank details, your son won't last a week.'"

The soldiers then allegedly put a balaclava on him before putting him and his son Jalil in a car. Destination: the presidential palace.

“We were taken to the 5th floor of the presidential palace. It was at that moment that I realized there was a coup d’état. That my son was in danger, that my husband was in danger… We were taken back, given balaclavas, surrounded again by masked soldiers with weapons, and I was taken to the CEMAC villas, the guest villas. It was there that I understood that we were in the midst of a coup and that they were surely going to prepare a rhetoric, a scenario against my son and me,” said Sylvia Bongo.

At the scene, the soldiers allegedly pressured her to give them her bank account details (RIB).

"They told me, 'If you don't give us your bank details, your son won't last a week.' I was very scared, I said, 'But I can't give them to you, I don't have them.' They said, 'In that case, you'll go to prison.'"   “I was in prison from October to November. And in November, one day, they came to get me, they put a hood over my head, machine guns were pointed at my stomach, and we ended up going into the basement of the presidential palace. And there I found myself in a room… They tied my feet, they tied my hands, they threw cold water on me,” Mrs. Bongo said.

The next moment, she was seated on a chair before her son Noureddine was brought into the room.

"I signed everything they wanted. I don't know what I signed."

“They brought me my son, who was in a terrible state. He was swollen all over. His eyes were bulging from their sockets. They were hitting him, hitting him. I was tied up, I couldn't do anything. They had taped me so I couldn't scream. Then they took him away. They took an iron bar to mount him, they strangled him with a stick. They started by strangling me. I staggered. I managed to hit the one who was strangling me and I said: you don't hit women. And then they said: 'If you don't want us to hit you, to hit your son, sign.' And then I signed everything they wanted. I don't know what I signed,” recounted Ali Bongo's wife.