The Guinean judiciary has ordered the opening of investigations into alleged crimes committed under former President Alpha Condé, who was overthrown by a coup in September 2021.
“I instruct you (…) to initiate without delay or to initiate legal proceedings or to refer to the competent jurisdiction or jurisdictions around the alleged facts committed during the period from 2010 to 2020 by persons who have yet to be identified,” said the Attorney General at the Court of Appeal of Conakry Alphonse Charles Wright in a letter Friday and sent to prosecutors under his instructions.
The period mentioned covers the period during which Alpha Conde ruled Guinea (2010-2021) before being overthrown in a military coup led by Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, who has since been installed as transitional president.
The attorney general cited murders, enforced disappearances, arrests or abductions by state agents, torture, and violations of individual freedoms as among the facts to be investigated.
The investigations will be based on calls for witnesses, hearings of victims, judicial requisitions “without any form of opposition of professional secrecy,” says the Attorney General.
The last years of Mr. Conde at the head of the country have been marked from 2019 by an increasingly authoritarian exercise of power, according to human rights defenders, in the face of a strong protest against a third term of the president. The protest, which was brutally repressed several times, resulted in dozens of civilian deaths and some deaths among the security forces.
Conde’s re-election in October 2020, vigorously contested by the opposition, was preceded and followed by dozens of arrests.
