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Libreville - A Gabonese doctor who compiled a "damning report" on the post-electoral violence that rocked the oil-rich central African nation was released on Saturday after more than a week in detention, her lawyer and a civil society group said.
"Dr Sylvie Nkoghe-Mbot was released on Saturday at 19:00," lawyer Eric Moutet and the Dynamique Unitaire civil society group said in two identical text messages.
They did not specify if the 56-year-old paediatrician, who heads an NGO named Hippocrate, had been given a conditional release.
Violence erupted in Gabon after President Ali Bongo was declared winner, with a wafer-thin majority. of the August 27 vote.
Defeated presidential candidate Jean Ping filed a legal challenge but the country's top court dismissed opposition claims of vote fraud and upheld Bongo's win.
Opposition figures say more than 50 people were killed in the post-poll violence but the government has given a toll of three dead.
Ping's French lawyer Moutet took up the case of Nkoghe-Mbot, who he said was the "co-author of a damning report on the victims of the exactions of the presidential guard."
At least 1 000 people were arrested following the post-poll violence and around 70 of them are still in detention, a judicial source told AFP.
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court based in The Hague has said she is opening an initial probe into the unrest.
