The person who led a 2008 coup in Guinea has returned to the West African nation after greater than a decade in exile
CONAKRY, Guinea — The person who led a 2008 coup in Guinea and whose transient rule was marked by a stadium bloodbath in opposition to peaceable demonstrators returned to the West African nation Wednesday after greater than a decade in exile in Burkina Faso.
Moussa “Dadis” Camara left the nation in December 2009 after narrowly surviving an assassination try carried out by one among his personal bodyguards. For years the federal government had sought to forestall his homecoming, fearing it may stoke political instability.
Nevertheless, one other coup earlier this yr in Guinea put a army junta in energy that was extra amenable to Camara’s return.
Camara’s aircraft touched down Wednesday on the airport in Conakry.
Camara, now 57, was a little-known military captain when he seized energy in Guinea in December 2008 simply hours after the demise of longtime dictator Lansana Conte had been introduced on state tv.
By the next September, opposition to the ruling junta had deepened. And through a peaceable anti-junta demonstration that month at a soccer stadium, Camara’s troopers fired upon the gang, killing at the very least 157 individuals, based on U.N. figures.
It stays unclear whether or not Camara may face legal costs in reference to the bloodbath. Nevertheless, so far, no trial has ever been held for the perpetrators of the violence, throughout which dozens of girls additionally had been gang-raped, based on human rights teams.
Camara’s exile after he was shot within the head ultimately paved the best way for Guinea’s first democratic elections since independence from France, which put Alpha Conde in energy.
The ex-coup chief did handle to make a short go to to Guinea in 2013 to attend his mom’s funeral, crossing at a land border with Liberia. However Guinean authorities have resisted Camara’s everlasting return, fearing it may stoke political tensions.
When Camara tried to go to Conakry in 2015, Conde pressured him to deplane on a layover in Abidjan earlier than the business flight may proceed to Guinea’s capital.
Now Conde has been pressured from energy by one other army junta and stays of their custody. First elected within the landmark 2010 vote, Conde noticed his reputation sink over the last decade he was in energy, significantly after he ran for a 3rd time period and stated time period limits didn’t apply to him. He in the end received re-election in October 2020, solely to be deposed within the army coup lower than a yr later.
———
Related Press author Krista Larson in Dakar, Senegal contributed.