The following article is a guest-post by Marco Bocchese on the trial of former junta members in Guinea over the 2009 Conakry Stadium massacre. Marco is an Assistant Professor at Webster Vienna Private University.

For the last year, Guinea has been mired in a bizarre political situation . Exactly thirteen years after the massacre at the Dixinn football stadium, a district in the capital Conakry, the trial against the leaders of the military junta finally began last September. The junta ruled the country from December 2008 to January 2010. The list of defendants includes Moussa Dadis Camara, better known as Dadis, captain of the presidential guard (the so-called red berets) and former head of state. What follows is the remarkable story of how one junta endorsed international criminal law to prosecute members of another and how these unprecedented proceedings may impact Guinean politics and society for years to come.  

How Guinea got here

Guinea was the first sub-Saharan Africa nation to gain independence from France in October 1958. It is known for its rich bauxite deposits, making it the second largest producing country globally. Despite its mineral wealth, however, Guinea ranks among the ten least developed countries according to the United Nations (2022 Human Development Index – HDI). The armed forces have always played a crucial role in the country’s domestic politics. They first guaranteed their support to Ahmed Sekou Touré, a nationalist leader and the first president of independent Guinea (1958-1984). Subsequently, the military staged the coup that installed career soldier Lansana Conté at the helm of the country for a quarter century (1984-2008). Military spending, which already amounted to 12.65% of the national budget in 2008, ballooned following the military’s seizure of power again in December 2008, reaching 24% in 2009 and 33.5% in 2010. 

The military’s grip on the country’s political and economic life did not loosen after Alpha Condé’s election in 2010. The latter’s decision to entrust two ministries (one for the fight against organized crime, the other for presidential security) to prominent members of the previous junta personally implicated in the massacre of 28 September 2009 demonstrated the army’s control. In July 2011 Condé luckily escaped an assassination attempt carried out by members of the army and the presidential guard. In the following ten years, Condé sought to consolidate his power and managed to get re-elected for a controversial third term in autumn 2020 after having the constitution amended to allow him to do so. 

In September 2021, when Colonel Doumbouya’s red berets put an end to Condé’s regime, the news was greeted with relief, if not joy, by all opposition forces who feared the establishment of a presidency for life. After months of exhausting negotiations with political and social forces, and under constant pressure from the international community, the current junta finally announced the roadmap towards areturn to the polls: presidential elections will be held in early 2025, and neither Doumbouya nor other junta members will be eligible to run for office.

Towards Trial

The following analysis is based on twenty-five interviews I conducted in Conakry with political leaders, government officials, judges, prosecutors, lawyers, and victims between the May and June 2023. These interviews shed light on the primarily political reasons which led the current junta to try Dadis alongside ten more defendants, all members of the armed forces. 

My first finding concerns the role of the international community in putting pressure on Guinean authorities to mete out justice at the domestic level. Seventeen interviewees (out of twenty-five) recognized and praised the fundamental contribution of the International Criminal Court (ICC), its preliminary examination and its monitoring of the country’s political and judicial situation. Without the ICC’s institutional pressure, they claim, there would have been no trial of former junta members.

Still, it would be mistaken to regard the trial as completely exogenous to Guinean politics. The current junta derives a two-fold advantage from holding the trial. First, the junta has presented itself as the guarantor of the trial and, in turn, derives its political legitimacy therefrom, at least until the next presidential elections. Second, holding the trial underscores the stark difference with the previous government that opposed and postponed the proceedings indefinitely. It is no coincidence that both victims’ associations and numerous political leaders, in the opposition during Condé’s decade-long presidency, have both publicly and privately expressed their approval of what the current military junta has achieved.

Hopes and worries tend to balance out in the interviewees’ opinions. Many of them noticed frightening analogies to the past. Just like Doumbouya, in 2009 Dadis also promised not to take advantage of his position as head of the military junta to be elected president, only to change his mind later, unleashing widespread street protests that were violently repressed. The history of independent Guinea is revealing in this regard: to date no incumbent head of state has ever resigned, conceded electoral defeat, or otherwise permitted a peaceful transfer of power. Bearing this in mind, some interviewees fear that history is doomed to repeat itself once more in the next electoral cycle.

There is also fear that a judicial approach to past atrocities in Guinea could distort historical truths, thereby creating false dichotomies between victims and perpetrators, as well as friends and foes. Four interviewees expressed their disappointment regarding the ICC Prosecutor’s choice to focus exclusively on the September 2009 massacre. According to them, the opening of a preliminary examination, by then ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo in mid-October 2009, unduly catalyzed the attention of the international community on a single event at the cost of neglecting other massacres that occurred before and after it.

Interviewees also raised the issue of a criminal proceeding aiming to ascertain the defendants’ individual responsibility losing sight of the collective (or ethnolinguistic, in this case) dimension of atrocities in Guinea. More specifically, Dadis was the first head of state from Forested Guinea, the country’s most remote and economically underdeveloped region. Whatever his faults, Dadis still enjoys widespread support from his people, who speculate that the ongoing trial is nothing more than a showdown aimed to oust the remaining members of their community from positions of power and re-establish the ‘ethnic hierarchies’ in place before the December 2008 coup. 

Aware of this collective dimension, numerous interviewees, including some political leaders, advanced the hypothesis of granting an amnesty (or another form of judicial pardon) if Dadis and co-defendants are found guilty. Upon establishing a judicial truth, in their view, an act of clemency could facilitate the pacification of Guinea and dispel the fears of a community which, just like its leader, feels accused and stigmatized. Given that the votes of Forested Guinea are coveted by all political actors and could be decisive in the race for presidency, it is no coincidence that political leaders are putting forth similar proposals.

Where to from here?

Despite the ongoing challenges and controversies canvassed above, the ongoing trial is seen somewhat positively or very positively by a large majority of the interviewees. For some, this moment is historic: they never imagined seeing a former head of state brought to justice, like a common criminal, in a country where the rich and powerful have always enjoyed impunity for their wrongdoings. However, it is clear to all that a guilty verdict would have immediate social and political repercussions. The priority therefore remains that of balancing the needs of justice with social peace amongst the ethnolinguistic communities of Guinea.