[4] Following the coup, Mainassara ruled Niger from 1996 to 1999, with his wife, Clémence Aïssa Baré, assuming the role of the country's first lady.
[1] In interviews, Baré has declined to call herself an exile, saying rather that "unfortunate circumstances simply led me to make other professional and family choices at a certain point in my life.
[5] Since 1999, former First Lady Clémence Aïssa Baré and her children have campaigned for the prosecution of those individuals responsible for her husband's murder.
[2] Successive Nigerien governments have declined to arrest or prosecute anyone suspected of Maïnassara's murder, citing the 1999 blanket immunity for "perpetrators, co-perpetrators and accomplices" connected to the 1999 coup d'état.
[3] She turned to the ECOWAS Court in Abuja, citing a similar investigation into the October 1987 assassination of President Thomas Sankara in neighboring Burkina Faso.