Who is moussa dadis camara

Interim president to form national unity govt. Stadium massacre a 'crime against humanity', says UN. Stadium massacre was 'crime against humanity', say UN and France. Damning report on opposition bloodbath points finger at junta. Former aide explains why he tried to kill junta leader. Donate Now. Take Action. Join Us. Give Now. Captain Moussa Dadis Camara of Guinea gestures during a meeting with political parties and local people at the military camp Alpha Yaya Diallo in Conakry, December 28, Completion of the investigation would open the door to long-awaited prosecutions.

At the time of the massacre, Dadis Camara was also commander-in-chief of the Guinean armed forces. Dadis Camara has been living in exile in Burkina Faso since December Hundreds of Red Berets, special-forces gendarmes, and plainclothes vigilantes loyal to Dadis suddenly appeared at the stadium exits, and some of them opened fire into the crowd with automatic weapons.

Others began murdering innocents with machetes. They also stripped and gang-raped more than a hundred women, using bayonets, shoes, pieces of wood, and gun barrels. One victim who survived watched in terror as soldiers murdered a girl who lay on the ground next to her by sticking a Kalashnikov into her vagina and pulling the trigger.

Guinea has never known democracy. Conakry was evacuated angrily by the French colonial administrators on September 28, , days after a referendum in which Guineans voted in favor of independence. For a quarter century, he did little else. In recent years, however, Guinea has become a key transshipment point for drug traffickers.

For Guineans, the immediate problem was the Army, which effectively ran the country. During confrontations with protesters in June, , and in January and February, , they had killed at least a hundred and forty-five people.

The massacre at the stadium in September was different, though; it was blatant, and the public sexual violence showed a new, brutal strategy. Evidence of the massacre emerged quickly, in the form of cell-phone videos, photographs, and eyewitness testimony, and it provoked international denunciations of the Dadis regime. Dadis reacted with a series of defensive and contradictory statements.

In response, Dadis suggested that France still harbored colonial ambitions in Guinea, and was plotting against him with Guinean opposition politicians. The President, it emerged, stayed awake at night and slept during the day, like Nosferatu. On October 5th, the U. Fitzgerald said that he had told Dadis to give up power. Most of these measures were swiftly seconded by the European Union.

Soon thereafter, Human Rights Watch issued a preliminary report, in which it concluded that the stadium attacks had been premeditated, and blamed President Dadis and several of his senior aides, who had led the units involved in the rapes and killings. Reports began to leak out that Dadis was building a militia, recruited from his tribe, the Kpelle, and trained by foreign mercenaries. Late last year, I flew to Guinea. President Dadis sent a black Chinese-built limousine to pick me up at the airport.

The car was waiting for me on the tarmac at the foot of the steps as I left the plane. Whenever he needed to clear traffic, he honked his horn until everyone got out of the way. Conakry, built on a needle of land that juts into the Atlantic Ocean, is laid out on a Gallic colonial grid, with wide boulevards shaded by great drooping mango trees and a complex of colonnaded government buildings, all painted the same shade of cream.

Jeeps crammed with armed soldiers rush frequently through the streets, and civilians pretend not to notice them. Guinea is a mainly Muslim country, and Conakry is dotted with mosques. These have a soft-edged quality to them: gingerbread houses made out of mud and painted in brown and white. At night, Conakry is dark. There is almost no electricity, and most automobile traffic ceases, so the city is quiet, except for the sound of crickets.

We sat at a table outside, near the swimming pool. He promised to take me to see President Dadis the next day. Of course, we understand it is because of their economic interests. Guinea is very resource-rich. We have bauxite, gold, diamonds—and we have recently discovered uranium. One day, I found my driver listening to a rousing song on the car radio in praise of the President. In his first months in office, Dadis had had his own television show, a combination of reality TV and public tribunal.

Soon after taking power, he had begun a campaign against official involvement in the drug trade, which turned out to be much greater than anyone suspected. Presidential guards had been used to unload drug cargoes from airplanes. Dadis took to arresting government officials and military officers he suspected of corruption and interrogating them on live television.

For the shows, he wore a form-fitting camouflage uniform, a red beret, and, frequently, oversized sunglasses. He presented himself as both judge and redeemer. After the show, he took refuge in the Russian Embassy, and soon fled the country. On another show, last June, Dadis humiliated the German ambassador, Karl Prinz, who had dared question him about his political intentions.

To the shock and amusement of the studio audience, Dadis dressed down the ambassador, who stood uncomfortably in the audience for long minutes. You are speaking to a President. The camp is a kind of Guinean Fort Hood, a vast complex of military housing spread over a hillside on the southern edge of Conakry. Except for the absence of roadside-shanty shops, there is little noticeable difference between its interior and the rest of the city; soldiers and civilians move around on foot, and there are laundry lines and cook fires everywhere.

It reminded me of low-income housing projects I had seen in Florida. A UN commission had travelled to Guinea to investigate the massacre.

The commissioners interviewed Camara and Diakite — and the argument between the two broke out soon after Diakite was interrogated, prompting several people close to the junta to say that the altercation centred on which of the two would take the blame for the massacre in front of the UN.

Diakite's statement confirmed this version of the events. Human rights groups have named Diakite as one of the commanders most responsible for the massacre.

Witnesses told the Associated Press they saw him ordering the killings inside a stadium. But human rights groups also hold Camara responsible, given that the presidential guard is under his command.