An exiled Burundian opposition leader has been arrested in Tanzania on the orders of the Bujumbura government, his lawyer said Friday.

Alexis Sinduhije was arrested in Tanzania's commercial capital Dar es Salaam on Wednesday after arriving from neighbouring Uganda, the politician's lawyer Habas Nyange told AFP by phone from Tanzania.

"Burundi authorities accuse him of involvement in a murder which happened several years ago and they are doing everything to have him extradited," Nyange said.

"All this is happening without any international arrest warrant against him."

Burundian officials declined to comment on the arrest, but the leader of the country's main opposition coalition, Leonce Ngendakumana, confirmed the arrest. Sinduhije, a former journalist and the head of the Movement for Solidarity and Development party, fled Burundi following disputed 2010 elections and the ensuing unrest that also forced other opposition leaders into exile.

He sought refuge in France.

More 300 opposition members were victims of extra-judicial killings last year according to a Burundian NGO. The UN Security Council said 53 people were executed in Burundi between January and Novemebr 2011.

The rising violence has sparked fears of a resumption of the civil conflict that claimed some 300,000 lives between 1993 and 2006.