Soldiers seize power in Guinea, detain president

Soldiers have taken over power in Guinea and President Alpha Conde is currently in detention.

Guinea’s special forces claimed on Sunday to have captured Conde and “dissolved” the country’s institutions.

“We have decided after having taken the president, who is currently with us (…) to dissolve the current constitution, to dissolve the institutions; we have also decided to dissolve the government and the closure of land and air borders,” said one of the uniformed and armed coup plotters in the statement,

The statement has been widely circulated on social networks but has not been broadcast on national television.

The coup plotters, with whom AFP’s correspondent confirmed the source of these images, broadcast a video of President Conde in their hands.

They ask him if he has been mistreated, and Alpha Conde, in jeans and a shirt on a sofa, refuses to answer them.

For its part, the Ministry of Defense said in a statement that “the insurgents (had) spread fear” in Conakry before taking the direction of the presidential palace, but that “the presidential guard, supported by the defense and security forces, loyalists and republicans, have contained the threat and pushed back the group of attackers.

Conde is an ally of President Muhammadu Buhari and Bola Tinubu, a National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC).