The probe places extra authorized strain on Alpha Conde, already dealing with allegations of corruption, assassination and torture.
Guinean Justice Minister Alphonse Charles Wright has introduced an investigation into its ex-President Alpha Conde for treason, two years after he was faraway from energy in a army coup.
Conde, Guinea’s first democratically elected chief, was faraway from workplace in September 2021 by an elite military unit led by Colonel Mamady Doumbouya. The coup got here after he sought to increase his decade-long tenure with a 3rd time period in workplace and violently suppressed protests towards the election bid.
Guinea’s army leaders have since launched a litany of judicial probes into Conde, together with for alleged corruption, assassination, torture, kidnapping and rape.
The newest probe, ordered on Monday, will look into “alleged acts of treason, criminal conspiracy and complicity in the illicit possession of arms and ammunition”, in line with a letter from Wright to the general public prosecutor in Guinea’s capital of Conakry.
The letter alleges Conde, who now lives in exile in Turkey, had acquired weapons and ammunition, with out offering particulars.
Guinea is one in every of a number of West and Central African states to have undergone a coup lately. Gabon, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have all seen at the very least one coup every since 2020.
Guinea’s army leaders have vowed to transition the nation again to civilian rule by 2026.
One other ex-president charged
Earlier this month, a drama played out for one more Guinean ex-president in authorized turmoil, Moussa Dadis Camara, as he was briefly free of jail in a jailbreak.
Camara was recaptured on November 4, hours after being busted out of the Central Home jail in Conakry by an armed commando, in line with his lawyer. His lawyer, Pepe Antoine Lamah, stated the jailed ex-president had not willingly participated within the breakout and as a substitute was kidnapped by armed males.
Nonetheless, a judicial supply, talking on situation of anonymity, stated the masked and armed troopers who arrived on the jail declared they “had come to free Captain Dadis Camara”. It was unclear whether or not Camara had escaped of his personal free will.
Camara – a former military officer who himself got here to energy in a coup, main the nation from December 2008 to January 2010 – has been detained since September 2022 on costs of homicide, sexual violence, torture, abduction and kidnapping.
They stem from a 2009 assault carried out by safety forces loyal to the then-military authorities chief.
The killing of 156 individuals and the rape of at the very least 109 girls began at a political rally in a Conakry stadium on September 28, 2009, and continued within the days that adopted, in line with a UN-mandated inquiry. Camara and ten different co-defendants face life imprisonment if convicted.
