Camp Boiro Memorial

Human Rights Violations
in the Popular and Revolutionary Republic of Guinea

Political Trials

In January 1971, the alleged "confessions" of some prominent prisoners, known to have been extracted under torture, were broadcast on radio. The various structures of the country's sole political party, the Parti démocratique de Guinée (PDG), the Guinea Democratic Party, were asked to pronounce their verdict as to the guilt of the prisoners and to recommend sentences. Prior to verdicts being passed, important government officials exhorted the population to impose heavy sentences. Ismael Toure, a government minister and a brother of the President, is reported to have declared on the radio
You have the enemy in your hands, crush the vermin.
Not surprisingly, all of the accused were found guilty by the PDG. The Popular National Assembly, Guinea's parliament, was convened as a Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal, and passed final verdicts and sentences: 92 people were sentenced to death (33 in absentia) and 58 people received sentences of life imprisonment with hard labor.
A second spate of "popular trials" began in July 1971, when further "confessions'' were broadcast daily over the radio, and local and regional PDG structures were called on to deliver verdicts and sentences. By October 1971, 128 cases were apparently tried in this fashion. Although some of the prisoners were reportedly sentenced to death, most of the sentences imposed were never publicized. These trials were grossly unfair as the accused were denied both the opportunity of being present at a hearing, and the right to defense counsel. Although the number of individuals arrested in 1970 and 1971 is not known precisely and has only been estimated at 3,500, there can be no doubt that the numbers of those tried and sentenced, in the manner described above, represented a small minority of the total number arrested. Many of those arrested in 1970 and 1971 have "disappeared" including, for exemple, Aribot Souleymane, nicknamed "Aribot Soda," a businessman and official of the PDG; Bangoura Karim, former minister and ambassador; and Keita Fadiala, magistrate and former ambassador.

Shortly after the defeat of the November 1970 invasion, the authorities announced that 29 prisoners, who had been arrested in 1969 following the alleged discovery of two other plots and had been sentenced at the time to long terms of imprisonment, had been sentenced to death for complicity in the invasion. No trial whatsoever preceded this new sentencing, and no evidence was produced to justify the accusation against the 29 individuals, who were being held in one of Guinea's most secure prisons, Camp Boiro, at the time of the invasion. Four other prisoners sentenced in 1969, who were not however included among those sentenced to death in 1970, have "disappeared" in prison, and were probably executed extrajudicially.
The second major wave of arrests took place in 1976 when President Sekou Toure announced that an attempt on his life by a young member of the Peuhl (or Fulani) ethnic group had been foiled. The President is reported to have declared:

We will annihilate them [the Peuhl] immediately, not by race war, but by radical revolutionary war.

Between June and August 1976 some 500 Peuhl were arrested. New "confessions" of counter-revolutionary" activities, known to have been extracted under torture, were broadcast and published in Guinea. An ex. cutive body, the National Council of the Revolution, was convened as a Revolutionary Tribunal and resolved in advance that all prisoners convicted of involvement in the "Peuhl conspiracy" would be sentenced to death. However, no trial proceedings are believed to have taken place, and no publicity was given to any sentences which may have been handed clown. Among those arrested and "disappeared" were such promirent individuals as Diallo Telli, former Guinean Ambassador to the United Nations and the USA, former Minister of Justice and first Secretary General of the Organization of African Unity (OAU); and Drame Alioune, former minister and ambassador.

In late 1980, the lest 16 surviving prisoners from the thousands who had been detained since 1969, 1971, or 1976 were released from Camp Boiro prison. No other prisoners known by Amnesty International to have been arrested on these occasions are believed to be alive in prison today. There must therefore be grave fears about the fate of the remaining thousands of untried and unsentenced prisoners, many of whose identities are unknown because they did not occupy prominent positions in the administration. Eyewitness testimonies suggest strongly that all may now be dead due to one or another of the following reasons:

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