TheNational Intelligence Service (French:Service national de renseignement, orSNR) is the national civilian intelligence and security agency ofRepublic of Burundi tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from internal and external and conducting civilian intelligence cybersecurity, clandestine and covert operations, counter-revolutionary, counterintelligence, counterterrorism, creation a civilian security network intelligence, executive protection (especially the President of the Republic of Burundi and Prime Minister of Burundi), intelligence gathering, internal security, maintain confidentiality of civilian intelligence information and documents, political security, political warfare, support irregular warfare operations, and threat assessment to national security.
The SNR is headed by an administrator-general (administrateur général) who reports directly to thePresident of theRepublic of Burundi, while its individual agents report both to the SNR hierarchy and thepublic prosecutor.[1] It runs its own detention facilities and is separate from theNational Police of Burundi (Police nationale du Burundi, PNB) and theNational Defence Force (Force de defense nationale, FDN).
The SNR superseded the National Security Service (Surêté nationale) founded under the regime ofJean-Baptiste Bagaza in 1984 which was popularly known as the "National Documentation" (Documentation nationale). It was reorganised in 2006 under the regime ofPierre Nkurunziza with a mission of "research, centralization, and exploitation of all information of a political, security, economic and social nature necessary for the government to act to guarantee the security of the state".[2] Its members wear plain clothes and are often recruited from among former members of theForces for the Defense of Democracy (Forces pour la Défense de la Démocratie, FDD) militia who fought for Nkurunziza in theBurundian Civil War.[3] It is one of the few Burundian government institutions not subject to the system of ethnic quotas imposed by theArusha Accords.[4]
According to a 2006 report byHuman Rights Watch (HRW), SNR agents "are known to be particularly brutal in carrying out their missions and to often act outside the law". It attributed 38 extrajudicial killings to SNR members in that year alone.[1] The SNR has been accused of numeroushuman rights abuses in connection to thepolitical unrest in Burundi after 2015. HRW subsequently documented numerous allegations of torture perpetrated by the SNR, sometimes in collaboration with the National Police during this period.[5] In 2018BBC News investigated allegations that the SNR had been running a "secret killing house" inBujumbura where political activists hostile to Nkurunziza had been detained illegally, tortured, and killed.[6]
The following have served as Administrator-General (administrateur général) of the SNR since its inception: