HRW has issued this december, 17th the fulle report on the September 28th massacre in Conakry by the army.
From the introduction:
The killing and rape of hundreds of opposition supporters on September 28, 2009, by Guinean security forces are likely to amount to crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said in a comprehensive report issued today. Accountability for the attacks is key to addressing Guinea’s ongoing political crisis, which deepened following a December 3 shootout involving the country’s coup leader and his aide de camp, both implicated in the September violence.
The 108-page report, “Bloody Monday: The September 28 Massacre and Rapes by Security Forces,” describes in detail the killings, sexual assaults, and other abuses at an opposition rally in a stadium in Conakry, the capital, committed largely by members of Guinea’s elite Presidential Guard, and the evidence suggesting that the attacks must have been planned in advance. The report further details how the military government’s security forces engaged in an organized cover-up, removing scores of bodies from both the stadium and hospital morgues and burying them in mass graves.
“The serious abuses carried out in Guinea on September 28 were clearly not the actions of a group of rogue, undisciplined soldiers, as the Guinean government contends,” said Peter Bouckaert, Emergencies director at Human Rights Watch. “They were premeditated, and top-level leaders must at the very least have been aware of what was being planned, our investigation shows.”
In the course of its investigation, Human Rights Watch interviewed some 240 victims, witnesses, military personnel, medical staff, humanitarian officials, diplomats, and journalists.
The report concludes that the majority of killings, sexual assaults, and other abuses were committed by members of the elite Presidential Guard commanded by the coup president Moussa Dadis Camara’s aide de camp at the time, Lieutenant Abubakar “Toumba” Diakité. Others found responsible for serious abuses included elite gendarmes under the command of Captain Moussa Tiégboro Camara, the minister of state in charge of the fight against drug trafficking and serious crime, as well as police officers and men in civilian clothes armed with machetes and knives.
Since the events of September 28, both Dadis Camara and Tiégboro have left Guinea to receive medical treatment in Morocco after being wounded in two separate incidents of infighting within the military on December 3. Diakité, allegedly implicated in the shooting of Dadis Camara, has gone into hiding.
