Tensions as Guinea-Bissau freezes ties with Cape Verde over claims of interference

Guinea-Bissau has frozen ties with Cape Verde over what it claims is interference in its internal affairs.

Praia earlier this week requested that Bissau swiftly release the country’s main opposition leader Domingos Simões Pereira.

He was place in pre-trial detention a week ago, accused of involvement in an attempted coup in October 2025, which he is alleged to have helped finance.

Pereira also faces charges of separate financial crimes and involvement in a 2023 coup. He was one of several senior politicians imprisoned by the military after it seized power in November 2025.

That coup saw the army replace President Umaro Sissoco Embalo just days after presidential and legislative elections.

Prior to his latest incarceration, Pereira had been under house arrest in Bissau since he was released from prison in January.

On Wednesday, a spokesperson for Guinea-Bissau’s National Transitional Council said Cape Verde has no right to comment on its political and judicial situation.

The legislative body established by the junta did not specify what the freezing of “political” relations concretely implies.

Cape Verde’s ruling party is historically linked to Pereira's party in Bissau.

The two countries waged a joint national liberation struggle against Portuguese colonialism between 1961 and 1974.