Guinea Bissau regime now admits security forces executed coup-plotter

BISSAU, Friday

Guinea-Bissau’s government has admitted that its security forces executed a police officer earlier this week as he turned himself in over his alleged role in what the regime describes as a coup bid.

Jaime Jose Nhate, Chief of Staff for the Interior Ministry, said late Thursday that civil society organisations had informed the minister of Major Yaya Dabo’s intent to turn himself in.

“Measures were taken to guarantee Dabo’s safety. Two unarmed security agents were even sent to ensure the security of the vehicle which drove Dabo to the police station,” he said.

“Security agents learned that he (Dabo) was responsible for the shooting of one of their comrades the night before as police, soldiers and paramilitary police combed the capital for suspects.

As he arrived at the police station agents on duty encircled his vehicle. He was shot at and killed.”

On December 26, soldiers overran the armed forces headquarters in the troubled west African country’s capital in what the authorities later described as a failed coup attempt led by the navy chief, who is now under arrest.

Deadly clashes erupted the following night as loyalist forces hunted suspected coup plotters.

Dabo was the brother of former territorial administration minister Baciro Dabo who was killed in 2009, three months after the assassination of his close ally, President Joao Bernardo Vieira.

Baciro Dabo was also seen as a strong contender in presidential elections following Vieira’s death in an apparent revenge attack by soldiers angered by their army chief’s killing.

The impoverished former Portuguese colony is notoriously unstable, with a history of coups and army mutinies which has made it a stomping ground for drug cartels who use it as a hub to traffic drugs to Europe.

In its latest crisis, a group of renegade soldiers on Monday attacked army headquarters and seized a large quantity of arms, which Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior branded an attempted coup.

Twenty-five renegade soldiers involved in an apparent coup plot in Guinea-Bissau are being detained in the capital and at an air base north of Bissau, an AFP reporter said. The arms were seized at the homes of two soldiers arrested for taking part in Monday’s attack on army headquarters.

(AFP)