[2] Its members wear plain clothes and are often recruited from among former members of the Forces for the Defense of Democracy (Forces pour la Défense de la Démocratie, FDD) militia who fought for Nkurunziza in the Burundian Civil War.
[3] It is one of the few Burundian government institutions not subject to the system of ethnic quotas imposed by the Arusha Accords.
[4] According to a 2006 report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), SNR agents "are known to be particularly brutal in carrying out their missions and to often act outside the law".
[1] The SNR has been accused of numerous human rights abuses in connection to the political 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.