Camp Boiro Memorial

Human Rights Violations
in the Popular and Revolutionary Republic of Guinea

The Failure of the Guinean Authorities to Account for "Disappeared" Prisoners

To date, the Guinean authorities have been unwilling to provide precise and substantiated information regarding the fate of "disappeared" prisoners, despite nurnerous appeals from their relatives living overseas, from third party governments and from international humanitarian organizations. In November 1978, in response to questions from journaliste from the international press regarding the fate of Diallo Telli, former Minister of Justice, arrested in 1976, President Sekou Toure is reported to have answered:

"Diallo Telli has been sentenced, and his fate is no longer in my hands. All those who were sentenced to death are dead."
(Diallo Telli a été condamné, donc il ne relève plus de mon domaine. Tous ceux qui sont condamnés à mort, sont morts.)—Le Monde, November 28, 1978.

The first public information concerning named "disappeared" cases was supplied by the Guinean authorities in January 1982 when, in answer to appeals from a member of the European Parliament, it was announced that seven Guineans arrested after the November 1970 invasion and married to European women had been executed on January 25, 1971. Another prisoner had, according to the authorities, escaped from detention and had not been apprehended again. The quality of this information is open to question. Amnesty International's information indicated that of the seven prisoners allegedly executed on January 25, 1971, three were not in fact arrested until mid-1971. Further, official documents from 1971 indicate that only three of the seven prisoners were sentenced to death. The eighth prisoner, Abdoulaye Djibril Barry, according to unofficial sources, was executed without trial in 1972.

Amnesty International remains deeply concerned that the fate of large numbers of "disappeared" prisoners arrested between 1969 and 1976 has yet to be sufficiently clarified by the Guinean authorities and that no action is known to have been taken by the government either to bring to justice those responsible for the torture or deaths of prisoners or to institute measures to ensure that no further incidents of this kind occur in the future.

Amnesty International has appealed to the authorities to provide information on 78 prisoners, none of whom was sentenced to death, but who must now be presumed to have been killed in prison. The authorities have so far failed to provide any information in response to Amnesty International's appeal.