“Family members and friends were also told that without electricity they had been reduced to eat dry food.”

UN rights chief Volker Turk said Bazoum’s reported detention conditions “could amount to inhuman and degrading treatment, in violation of international human rights law”.

ECOWAS is determined to stop the sixth military takeover in the region in just three years and has severed financial transactions and electricity supplies and closed borders with landlocked Niger, blocking much-needed imports to one of the world’s poorest countries.

No electricity for the the homes of the former president and his family when the entire nation has been cut off from electricity imports? Before this coup only 18% of Nigers population had access to electricity, so how is this inhumane for them but not the other 82% of Nigeriens?