(Conakry) Former dictator Moussa Dadis Camara returned to Guinea to answer in court on Wednesday, along with ten other defendants, for his alleged responsibility in the massacre of September 28, 2009 in a Conakry stadium, one of his lawyers said on Sunday. .
Posted at 1:27 p.m.
“My client Dadis Camara arrived overnight from Saturday to Sunday in Conakry to respond to his summons related to the September 28 trial,” Ms.e Pepe Antoine Lamah.
He is “in a safe place for security reasons”, and receives some friends, he added.
Relatives speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed that he had returned to “clear his honor” before the judges.
Captain Camara, who came to power in 2008 in a military coup, is one of 11 former officials called to appear on Wednesday for the abuses committed on September 28, 2009 inside and around the 28 -September.
Soldiers, police and militiamen caused a bloodbath when opposition supporters gathered to peacefully demonstrate their strength and dissuade Mr. Camara from running for president in January 2010.
On that day and the following, 156 people were killed and thousands injured with unbridled cruelty, at least 109 women were raped, says the report of an international commission of inquiry mandated by the UN, document published three months after the fact.
The actual numbers are likely higher.
In December 2009, Captain Camara’s aide-de-camp, Aboubacar Sidiki Diakité, alias “Toumba”, head of the presidential guard and present in person at the stadium, shot him. “Toumba”, another of the main suspects in Wednesday’s trial, accused Mr. Camara of having ordered the massacre.
Mr. Camara was eventually forced into exile in Burkina Faso.
One of the concerns of victims’ associations is the presence at trial of all the accused. The latter were prohibited from leaving the territory. Some have been in detention for years.
The collective of lawyers defending four of the defendants reported in a statement on Saturday that their clients had been summoned to court the day before the trial. They say they fear their detention before the trial.
The collective “will not hesitate to boycott this trial if the free defendants undergo, at the start of this trial, arbitrary detention”, he warns.