Amnesty International's main concerns were the detention without trial of suspected
political opponents of the govern meet, the government's continued failure to account
for a large number of political detainees who "disappeared"
from custody in previous years, the torture of detainees and harsh prison conditions.
There were many reports in 1983 of detentions for political reasons but Amnesty
International was often unable to verify them or to estimate the number of political
detainees held at any given time because of the high level of official censorship
affecting all communication between Guinea and the outside world and official secrecy
regarding detentions. On the basis of information received in 1983, it appeared
that Camp Boiro in Conakry, the main detention centre,
contained an average of about 200 political detainees over recent years although
this figure was occasionally temporarily increased by several hundred. Most detainees
were apparently held for several months and then released or moved to another prison.
Political detainees were also reportedly held during the year at the Alpha Yaya and Samory
Toure military camps in Conakry and at several police stations in the capital,
at Camp Keme Boureima in
Kindia, and in police stations or prisons in at least seven other major towns. Reliable
estimates for the number of political detainees held in these locations were not
available. Exiled opposition sources provided estimates of the total number of political
detainees which varied from several hundred to several thousand, but the accuracy
of these claims was difficult to assess.
Many people were detained for openly expressing some form of dissent, however minor,
from directives by local officials of the only authorized political party, the Parti
Démocratique de Guinée, the Guinean Democratic Party, or for criticizing
some aspect of party policy. Others were reportedly detained for participating in
student protests against obligatory agricultural work or because they were suspected
by the authorities of attempting to leave Guinea without official permission. Many
others appeared to have been arrested because they were suspected of having been
connected with a grenade explosion at the Palais du peuple, People's Palace,
in May 1980 or attempted sabotage at Conakry airport in February 1981.
None of those who were known to have been detained for political reasons in 1983
were believed to have been charged or tried by the court, arrests and subsequent
detentions were often ordered by minor party officials or local administrators without
reference to any superior authority, and the constitutional and legal safeguards
which exist in Guinea to protect citizens against arbitrary arrest were inoperative.
The 48-hour legal limit on garde-à-vue (police custody) and the 72-hour
limit on preventive detention apparently were not respected by the authorities when
arrests were made for political reasons. Political detainees received no protection
from the judicial structure, which appeared to have no power to intervene in such
cases. Detainees were often interrogated first by members of the milice (militia)
or of the police, and then by political officials. In 1983, as in previous years,
detainees branded as "counter-revolutionaries" or as members of the "fifth
column" were usually transferred to Camp Boiro in
Conakry and interrogated by the Comité révolutionnaire (Revolutionary
Committee), a body which consisted of senior political officials and relatives of
President Ahmed Sekou Toure and had sweeping powers of arrest and detention. The Comité révolutionnaire was
believed by Amnesty International to make use of coercion and duress including torture
to extract "confessions" from political detainees.
Amnesty International continued to investigate the case of Bah
Mahmoud, a food technology engineer who had been detained without trial
since August 1979 in connection with an alleged plot to destroy public buildings
with explosives. At least 10 other people arrested at the same time as Bah Mahmoud are
believed to have been extrajudicially executed by the authorities shortly after
they were taken into custody, by means of the diète noire, "black
diet" (total deprivation of food and water). Investigations were also made
by Amnesty International into the case of Barry Mouctar, who was repatriated
forcibly and extrajudicially from the Ivory Coast in April 1981. He was detained
on arrival at Conakry and taken to Camp Boiro, where he was apparently interrogated
in connection with the May 1980 grenade explosion. He reportedly continued to be
held there without trial in 1983. Amnesty International made further inquiries in
1983 about two other Guineans, Cheik Mohamed Kone and Jack Soumah,
who were forcibly and apparently unlawfully repatriated from Liberia in November
1981, where they had reportedly been linked to an exiled opposition grouping Both
were reportedly held in Camp Boiro.
The authorities continued to withhold information on the fate of some 2,900 political
detainees who were arrested between 1969 and 1976 and reportedly
"disappeared" in prison. Among the detainees were many former government
ministers and senior civil servants, army officers, teachers, lawyers and medical
personnel who were arrested in a series of purges and accused of "counter-revolutionary" or "fifth
column"
offences. Many of them were killed in prison, often by means of the "black
diet", or died as a result of malnutrition and disease. Amnesty International
sent appeals to the authorities throughout the year to end their policy of secrecy
regarding political detainees and to supply information on the fate of 78 named "disappeared" detainees.
In December 1981, at the time of an Amnesty International mission to Guinea, the
authorities had agreed to provide information on the fate of those individuals,
but they failed to do so in either 1982 or 1983.
There were eye-witness reports that torture and other forms of ill-treatment were
regularly being used in many military camps, prisons and police stations as a means
of intimidating individuals taken into custody and of extracting
"confessions" from them. Beatings appeared to be administered as a matter
of routine against newly arrested detainees suspected of either criminal or political
offences, often with several guards using rifle butts, sticks or truncheons. In
many cases, suspects were bound tightly with rope or metal wire, a practice which
often resulted in temporary paralysis. Many suspects were denied food and water
for several days in order to weaken them and to facilitate the extraction of confessions.
Individuals arrested on suspicion of serious political offences were usually held
at Camp Boiro or at Camp Keme Boureima in Kindia. In both these
camps victims were regularly beaten and deprived of food and water, burned with
cigarettes and had electric shocks applied to the head, limbs and genitals. Standards
of sanitation, nutrition and medical care remained unacceptably low. Most detainees
were believed to be held in small, poorly ventilated cells and to be deprived of
exercise. Conditions in the tête de mort ("death's head")
quarter at Camp Boiro were described as particularly cruel with detainees held in
grossly overcrowded and absolutely dark cells. All political detainees in Guinea
were believed to be held incommunicado.
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