Guinea: Alpha Condé invested president, repression at its height

Tuesday, December 15, the day of the inauguration of President Alpha Condé at the Mohammed-V Palace, the National Front for the Defense of the Constitution (FNDC) had planned a peaceful march. For the umpteenth time, this citizens’ movement intended to denounce the “constitutional coup” which allowed the outgoing president to re-emerge for a third term. And once again, his mobilization was not authorized. Is it for fear of isolated and sporadic protests by its militants that Conakry is under close surveillance?

On the November 8 bridge, access to the Kaloum peninsula, a district which houses the administrative center, is completely locked. The vehicles are searched, and the bikers, summoned to turn back, in particular by elements of the special forces and commandos of the Bata (Autonomous Battalion of airborne troops). The portion of the Fidel-Castro highway, which leads from the airport to Kaloum, is closed to traffic.

But it is above all the Le-Prince road, this double track which crosses for about twenty kilometers the northern suburbs supposedly favorable to the opposition, which concentrates this debauchery of defense and security forces. The three army corps are represented there, with the presence in particular of red berets from the battalions of “Chinese commandos” (formed by the latter) and “Rangers”. At their side, gendarmes and police officers from the Cmis (Mobile Intervention and Security Company), agents from the BAC (Anti-Crime Brigade), the BRI (Research and Intervention Brigade), or the latest police officer , the Special Protection and Intervention Unit (Uspi), formalized in early November. “Patrols take place day and night,” testifies, worried, a resident of the neighborhood.

Authoritarian drift

In military memory, this is the first time that such a security device has been deployed in Conakry since 2010. Reinforcements have even disembarked from the Kindia camp (130 km east of the capital). Recall that the requisition of the army was announced on public television four days after the presidential election of October 18, when the post-election violence grieved the country. A decision then endorsed by the Ministry of Territorial Administration, although this does not in principle fall within its competence.

In short, “it is not really the image of a great investiture and a festive ceremony that will be postponed,” said Ibrahima Diallo, in charge of FNDC operations and coordinator in Guinea of ​​the Turn the page movement. But it shows the face of the regime in place. If the presidential election had taken place under normal conditions, why militarize the capital? We can see that we have gone from a legal regime to an illegal regime, from a democratic regime to an autocratic regime. Power has been confiscated by arms in Guinea, and this third term is not legitimate, it is not supported by the people. ”

Like the other founding members of the FNDC, Ibrahima Diallo rarely sleeps more than one night in one place. The leaders and activists of the movement – which has nevertheless been considerably weakened by the “abandonment” of political parties launched in the presidential race and by the ban on their demonstrations for several months – continue to be hunted down by the defense forces and of security. Forty-eight of them are imprisoned to date according to the FNDC, including Foniké Mengué, also deputy coordinator of Turn the page. He has been arbitrarily detained in Conakry central prison since his arrest on September 29, when he was preparing to demonstrate against Alpha Condé’s third term.

Hundreds of arrests

At the same time as the clashes between protesters and the defense and security forces which resulted in the death of about fifty civilians, according to the opposition, the waves of arrests were particularly amplified after the presidential election of October 18. Three hundred and twenty-five people were arrested, according to a report by the Attorney General near the Conakry Court of Appeal made public on October 31. A count that Amnesty International updates today: “The authorities have also carried out at least four hundred arbitrary arrests targeting opponents and members of civil society after the presidential election,” the organization said in a statement. It also details the circumstances of certain deaths recorded in the northern suburbs, resulting from “operations with the appearance of punitive expeditions against the inhabitants of an entire district”, according to Fabien Offner, researcher on South Africa. ‘West to Amnesty International.

“Relentless repression of the opposition in Guinea”, worried, for its part, on December 11, the organization Human Rights Watch. “It seems that the vast majority of those arrested were targeted simply because of their known or suspected political affiliation, or because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” summarizes researcher Ilaria Allegrozzi in a statement calling for release “those unjustly imprisoned”. Among them, executives from the Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea (UFDG, the main opposition party), arrested between November 11 and 13: Vice-President Ibrahima Chérif Bah, coordinator of the Ousmane communication unit Gaoual Diallo, the coordinator of the federations Mamadou Cellou Baldé or the ex-campaign director of the party in Kindia Abdoulaye Bah. But also Étienne Soropogui, president of the “Our Common Values” movement.

Opponents accused of possessing weapons of war

The toll of these arrests, “even if it is difficult to establish with precision”, could today reach “nearly 500 arrests”, estimates Mr.^e Mohamed Traoré, former president of the Guinean Bar Association. And to be alarmed at the offenses now accused of certain opponents: “The dean of the investigating judges of the Dixinn Court of First Instance (commune of Conakry) sent a letter rogatory to the Central Directorate of the Judicial Police (DCPJ) to the effect of investigating alleged facts of manufacturing, stockpiling, possession of weapons of war and ammunition. This act has become a sort of blank check which allows the operational units of the DCPJ to raided neighborhoods favorable to the UFDG to carry out raids. Elderly people, minors and the sick are loaded into pick-ups at the threat of weapons of war and taken to the various mobile intervention and security companies where they are piled up like cattle. ”

Charges markedly more serious than those which hitherto targeted members of the FNDC (“maneuvers and acts likely to compromise public security or bring public order”, “criminal participation in an unarmed assembly on the public highway ”, etc.). “Today, to further demonize the opponents and in particular the one who is considered the main one among them [Cellou Dalein Diallo, qui revendique sa victoire à la présidentielle, NDLR], we are talking about the possession of weapons of war. There have been so many deaths during political protests that the state does not want to take responsibility. He therefore wants to accredit the thesis of the opposition’s involvement in the murderous violence. As if an opponent could kill his own militants ”, decrypts M^e Traore.

Overload of files

How can Guinean lawyers, in these circumstances, ensure the defense of their clients? Knowing that arrests are increasing, and that the number of councils engaged in voluntarily ensuring the defense of these opponents is hardly expandable. “The Collective of lawyers, which I coordinate, faces enormous difficulties in the management of these cases, concedes Mr.^e Traore. It is sometimes difficult for us to be present before all the courts. There are even red-handed hearings that are being held without our being informed. On the other hand, with a regime that is getting harder and harder, we are exposing ourselves and our loved ones. The other major difficulty that we encounter is that the independence of the judiciary is a pipe dream, especially when it comes to these types of cases. Of course, no one will officially recognize it, but it is a reality. ”

Two French councils could soon lend them a hand. This Monday, December 14, M^is Patrick Klugman and Ivan Terel, both lawyers at the Paris bar, announced in a press release that they had been seized by relatives of Ibrahim Cherif Bah. “They approached our firm and gave us an urgent mandate to join the college of lawyers ensuring his defense as well as that of MM. Ousmane Gaoual Diallo, Étienne Soropogui, Abdoulaye Bah and Mamadou Cellou Baldé. […] We want to get to Conakry as soon as possible to participate in the defense of Mr. Bah and his companions in misfortune and to determine whether the prosecutions launched against the accused persons obey considerations other than political ones and offer them are given the opportunity to effectively assert their rights, ”they write. The pair also evokes the possibility of seizing “regional and international bodies on the political and judicial situation in Guinea” and of amplifying “the efforts made by [leurs] Guinean colleagues and human rights organizations ”. Not insignificant support against the steamroller of the security apparatus, doomed to muzzle any form of opposition to Alpha Condé’s third term.