Guinea — Guinea’s public prosecutor on Wednesday denied the arrest of two anti-junta activists and called for investigations into their disappearances, which sparked an international outcry.
Oumar Sylla, better known as Fonike Mengue, and Mamadou Billo Bah — two leaders of a citizens’ collective calling for a return to civilian rule — were arrested on July 9, their movement said.
They were the latest of several anti-junta opposition members to be detained since the military seized power in September 2021.
Rights group Amnesty International and France’s hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon have called for their immediate release.
Guinean lawyers began a two-week strike on Tuesday over what they denounced as “arbitrary arrests”.
On Wednesday, the Guinean public prosecutor’s office released a statement acknowledging “persistent reports of kidnappings” -– including those of Sylla and Bah.
But it said that “no investigating body has questioned or arrested any person whatsoever”.
“Better still, no penitentiary establishment in the country is holding these abducted persons,” it added.
The statement called on public prosecutor’s offices in the capital Conakry to “open thorough and complete investigations” into the disappearances.
“The judicial police are working hard to track down the abducted persons, and to identify and arrest the alleged perpetrators,” it added.
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Opposition alleges ‘kidnapping’
Sylla and Bah’s pro-democracy movement, the National Front for the Defence of the Constitution (FNDC), described the pair’s arrest as a “kidnapping”.
The movement said the two men had been arrested by security forces and soldiers from elite units, before being taken to the military police’s judicial investigations department and later the island of Kassa where they were being held incommunicado.
“Oumar Sylla and Mamadou Billo Bah have been held in secret detention in violation of international law since their arrest by armed persons in uniform,” Samira Daoud, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for West and Central Africa, said in a statement on July 11.
“Pending their release, the authorities must guarantee and ensure their safety, disclose where they are being detained, and allow them access to lawyers and family visits,” the statement added.
The FNDC was at the forefront of protests against former president Alpha Conde, who was toppled in 2021.
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The civil society collective is one of Guinea’s last opposition voices trying to mobilise support for a return to civilian rule in the poor West African country, plagued with a turbulent political history.
Authorities dissolved the movement in 2022 after banning all demonstrations.
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Source: AFP
Picture: Pixabay
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