Guinea's Junta orders prosecution of former leader Condé and ex-ministers

Guinea's ruling junta on Thursday ordered prosecutors to take legal action against former president Alpha Condé.

The prosecutions against Condé as well as other officials and ex-ministers, include alleged acts of "corruption, illicit enrichment, money laundering and embezzlement of public funds and complicity".

In total, the Minister of Justice, Alphonse Charles Wright, gave a list of 188 names, some of which are already in prison. Their accounts are frozen, according to the letter sent by the minister to the attorneys general.

"It is imperative to open judicial investigations to clarify the origin of the funds in these various accounts." The minister added.

The former leader was overthrown in 2021, by Colonel Mamadi Doumbouya. Since then he was granted multiple stays abroad to seek medical treatment.

The Guinea military authorities said in May they would prosecute former President Alpha Conde and 26 of his officials for violence surrounding his bid for a controversial third term in office in 2020.

The Guinean judiciary had acted following the January 2022 action by the National Front for the Defense of the Constitution (FNDC), a collective that led the months-long protest against the third term for Conde from October 2019.

The collective has since been dissolved by the junta because its members denounced the "unilateral" management of the so-called transition period, the seizure of power, and had called for demonstrations, banned by the authorities.