Guinean Conakry military carry out a coup and arrest the president
On Sunday, a group of soldiers detained the President of
Guinea, Alpha Condé, in an attempted coup that has already led to a statement
by the alleged coup leader on the dissolution of the Government and the closure
of borders.
The events have been precipitated from the first hour, when
several local media echoed shots with automatic weapons by the military in
Conakry and, in particular, in the Kaloum neighborhood, a peninsular end of the
city that houses important buildings, between they the presidential palace, the
Sékoutoureya, from which they could have taken Condé, 83 years old. In the same
area are the Ministry of Defense and the headquarters of the General Staff.
The accesses have been blocked, while the military
themselves and even foreign embassies have urged citizens not to go out into
the streets while waiting for what was happening to be clarified. “Everybody is
at home and the shots are getting louder and louder,” Kaloum’s neighbor,
Mohamed Morgan, told the Bloomberg news agency.
Sources cited by the RFI station and by the Jeune Afrique
portal have identified the perpetrators of the shots as members of the Special
Forces Group, a body created in 2018. The group is led by a former legionnaire
of the French Armed Forces, the Lieutenant Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, who has
already been seen in a video posted on social networks.
In it, Doumbouya appears with a red beret and sunglasses
flanked by two other uniformed men and goes over a list of grievances
attributed to Condé and his party, including activities of corruption and
social poverty, and announces that he has ordered the dissolution of the main
institutions and annul the current Constitution. It also proclaims the closure
of borders.
«The socio-political and economic situation of the country,
the dysfunction of the republican institutions, the instrumentalization of
justice, the trampling of the rights of the citizens, the economic
mismanagement (…) have led the republican army to assume its responsibilities
towards the people from Guinea ”, explains Doumbuya in the recording. It also
announces the formation of a National Committee for the Union and Development
that takes power.
The coup plotters have also released images of Condé, shown
sitting in an armchair, with his shirt open and barefoot and surrounded by
soldiers to demonstrate his alleged arrest, according to the Guineenews portal.
The images contrast with the first reaction of the Guinean
government, which, through the mouth of the secretary general of the
presidency, Naby Yusuf Kiridi Bangura, wanted to defend that “the situation is
under control,” according to the Bloomberg news agency.
The military rebellion consummated this Sunday stems from
months of political tensions in which Doumbouya has tried to make his group gain
more weight. In May, there was speculation about the possible arrest of this
officer.
Doumbouya himself has called for the “unity” of his
“brothers in arms” and for them to remain in their barracks, but it is doubtful
whether the rest of the Army will follow the GPS. “The forces loyal to Alpha
Condé have not said their last word, but the president is truly in the hands of
the coup plotters,” a person close to the president has acknowledged in
statements to Jeune Afrique.
Controversial reelection
Condé, 83, started his third term in December 2020, after
winning an election that the opposition considered fraudulent. His intention to
remain in power had already caused a rebound in tensions that dates back to
2019 and that resulted in several deaths.
The current president came to power in 2010 after decades as
an opposition leader under the Lansana Conté dictatorship and, to run for a
third term, he required a change in the Constitution.
Condé already suffered another coup attempt in 2011,
although the sources cited by Jeune Afrique consider that the situation is now
more serious.
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