Hundreds of opposition party supporters were detained, some of whom were prisoners
of conscience. Thirty-eight soldiers, including possible prisoners of
conscience, were sentenced to prison terms after an unfair trial. Torture
and ill-treatment continued to be widespread. Prison conditions were harsh.
No death sentences or executions were reported.
In October El Hadj Biro Diallo, President
of the National Assembly, was suspended from the Parti de l'unité et
du progrès (Pup), Party of Unity and Progress, the party in power, for attacking
the country's human rights record. He had publicly compared Guinea's detention centres
with the Boiro Camp, where scores of people “disappeared” when President
Ahmed Sékou Touré was in power between the 1950s and 1980s. He
had also condemned the use of torture and ill-treatment to extract confessions and
exhorted President Lansana
Conté to take action to prevent such abuses.
General Conté,
who seized power in 1984, was re-elected in the first round of the December presidential
elections. Opposition parties accused the government of rigging the results by denying
their supporters voting cards.
Scores of opposition party members and supporters were arrested in March and detained,
some of whom were prisoners of conscience. The arrests took place following
violent clashes between the security forces and residents in the town of Kaporo,
north of the capital Conakry, during which at least 10 residents and one policeman
were killed. Residents of Kaporo, an opposition stronghold, had refused to move
out of a residential area which the authorities claimed they had illegally occupied.
Among those arrested were three members of the National Assembly and of the
opposition Union pour la nouvelle République, Union for the New Republic.
They were the opposition party's
Sixty of those detained and charged in connection with the clashes were
tried in June before the court of first instance. During the trial, El-Hadj Alhassane
Bah said that he had been tied up and tortured by members of the security forces.
There was no investigation into the allegation. Fifty-eight of the
defendants, including possible prisoners of conscience, were convicted of criminal
offences, including violence and common assault, incitement to disobedience and
racial hate. The three members of the National Assembly were sentenced to prison
terms of between two and five months and a large fine; the others
were sentenced to one year's imprisonment. In October all of them were released
following a presidential pardon.
In April at least 20 people, including Momory Camara and Mamady
Famory Condé both members of the National Assembly and of the opposition
Rassemblement du peuple de Guinée (rpg), Guinean People's Rally, were arrested
in Beyla town following a political rally organized there by the Rpg. The two members
of the National Assembly were released after three days. The others, including Yasolo
Camara and Mamady Sylla, were detained without charge or trial for a
month; they were possible prisoners of conscience.
Hundreds of people were arrested during the presidential campaign and election.
Some were released, but at the end of the year more than 100 people, including political
leaders and members of the parliamentary opposition, continued to be held without
charge or trial. A candidate in the presidential election, Alpha
Condé, President of the Rpg, was accused by the authorities of wishing
to leave Guinea illegally and of seeking to recruit troops to destabilize the country. Marcel
Cros, President of the Parti démocratique africain de Guinée,
African Democratic Party of Guinea, was accused of illegal possession of firearms.
Together with other opposition activists, they were held in the detention centre
at Conakry.
Opposition members of parliament and local government councillors, including Koumbafing
Keita, Mamady Yo Kouyaté and Ramatoulaye Diallo as well
as other elected officials of the Rpg, were also detained without charge or trial.
They were held in the civil prison in Kankan.
Foday Fofana, a Sierra Leonean journalist arrested in 1997 (see Amnesty International
Report 1998), was released in January without charge. He was immediately expelled
to Sierra Leone. Moussa Traoré, a supporter of the Rpg and a possible
prisoner of conscience who had been sentenced to three years' imprisonment
in 1996 (see Amnesty International Report 1998), was released
in September.
The trial of scores of soldiers accused of participation in a mutiny in
1996 (see Amnesty International Report 1997) began before
the State Security Court in March. The trial failed to meet minimum international
standards for fair trial. During the proceedings, some of the defendants stated
that they had been forced to make confessions under torture (see below). Their allegations
were not investigated. Others said they had spent nine months in prison without
being presented before a judge. Thirty-eight soldiers, including possible
prisoners of conscience, were sentenced to prison terms ranging from seven months
to 15 years. Fifty-one defendants were acquitted.
Torture and ill-treatment continued to be widespread. In the June trial following
the arrests in Kaporo, some defendants, whose wounds were still visible, said that
the security forces had interrupted their prayers and then beaten them in front
of the mosque at the time of arrest. During the trial of soldiers accused of participation
in a mutiny (see above), some defendants who had been detained on Kassa
islands said that they had been burned and “had endured the worst of humiliations” by
the security forces. One defendant said that he had been plunged into water with
his hands and feet tied. He alleged that he was later put on a table and whipped.
After the widespread arrests of opposition activists in December, members of the
security forces held some detainees on the ground, stamped on their hands and feet,
and beat them. Some of the detainees received up to 50 truncheon blows twice in
the same day.
Prison conditions were harsh and often amounted to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
In March Amnesty International sent a delegate to observe the trial of the soldiers
accused of mutiny but he was refused admission to the courtroom. In July, near the
end of the trial, the authorities wrote to Amnesty International reiterating their
refusal to admit an Amnesty International observer. The letter stressed that since
the arrival of the second republic in 1984, the rights of the defence had been effectively
guaranteed.
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