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NIAMEY, Niger: Nine members of an armed rebel movement seeking the release of Niger’s ousted president surrendered Monday, officials in the north of the military-ruled country said.
The rebel Patriotic Liberation Front (FPL) was set up in August 2023, a month after Niger’s democratically elected president Mohamed Bazoum was overthrown in a military coup.
Since then, Bazoum has been imprisoned with his wife Hadiza at the presidential palace in the capital Niamey.
“Nine FPL fighters repented and handed over their weapons and ammunition on Monday during a ceremony in the presence of General Ibra Boulama,” the governor of Agadez, an official from the governorate of the northern desert region near Libya told AFP.
FPL members began surrendering at the start of the month after discreet negotiations by “influential local personalities,” the Air-Info media outlet reported.
On November 1, FPL spokesman Idrissa Madaki and three other members turned themselves in separately in two towns near the Libyan border, according to Niger’s army and national television.
Last week, FPL leader Mahmoud Sallah was “provisionally stripped” of his nationality as well as seven members of the Bazoum regime who were suspected notably of “terrorist bomb attacks.”
Sallah had claimed responsibility for attacks against the army in the north and disabling part of a crucial pipeline carrying crude oil to Benin in June.
He had also threatened to attack strategic sites.
Another rebel movement also demanding Bazoum’s release, the Patriotic Front for Justice (FPJ), has held since June the military prefect of northeastern Bilma and four of his security team, kidnapped after an ambush.
Authorities in Niger, which is also battling attacks by jihadist groups, have stepped up security in recent weeks, with military patrols, checks and searches of vehicles.

WASHINGTON: US President-elect Donald Trump has moved quickly to staff up his incoming administration, naming loyalists to several key posts within days of his election victory and signaling his desire to have some seated without a Senate confirmation process.
The staffing picks are the subject of intense speculation and scrutiny, with Trump vowing that his second administration will oversee a radical shake-up of the federal government.
The 78-year-old Republican tycoon said Sunday he would tap hard-line immigration official Tom Homan as the country’s “border czar,” while US media reported the nod for UN ambassador as going to New York congresswoman Elize Stefanik, a vocal Trump ally.
Stephen Miller, another fierce critic of illegal immigration who served in Trump’s first administration, has been tapped for deputy chief of staff.
The picks signal movement on a number of Trump’s key campaign messages, with Homan’s hard-line immigration stance making him a loyal hand in carrying out the incoming president’s deportation promises, while Stefanik, who has voiced strong support for Israel, will represent the administration as the UN grapples with the ongoing wars in Gaza and Lebanon.
Stefanik’s nomination would need approval by the Senate, but Trump is hoping to bypass Congress by making appointments while the chamber is in recess.
He has turned the issue into a loyalty test, insisting that any Republican seeking to be the leader of the Senate “must agree” to recess appointments.
The three senators jockeying for the post immediately issued statements saying they supported the move, or were at least open to the idea.
Trump will not be inaugurated until January, and had previously made one cabinet-level appointment, naming his campaign manager Susie Wiles as his White House chief of staff, a position that does not require Senate confirmation.
His weekend nominations for both border czar and ambassador to the UN will help him fulfill a number of his key promises to the American electorate.
Homan, a former acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), holds strident views on immigration, as does Miller, who served as Trump’s senior adviser and speechwriter during his first term.
Curbing illegal immigration served as one of Trump’s central campaign promises as he pledged to launch the largest deportation operation of undocumented migrants in US history beginning on day one.
“I’ve known Tom for a long time, and there is nobody better at policing and controlling our Borders,” Trump said of Homan on Truth Social, adding that he will be in charge of “all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin.”
Stefanik, a key Trump ally now in her fifth term in office, has been a staunch defender of Israel and will head to the UN as the wars in Gaza and Lebanon dominate diplomacy.
Israel welcomed the appointment Monday.
“At a time when hate and lies fill the halls of the UN, your unwavering moral clarity is needed more than ever,” its UN ambassador Danny Danon wrote on X, wishing her “success in standing firm for truth and justice.”