The African Union (AU) announced on Friday the suspension of Guinea from all its “activities and decision-making bodies”, after the coup d’état carried out on Sunday by the military in this West African country. The African Union, two days after a similar decision by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
The pan-African organization, based in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, also asks the UN Security Council “to approve the final ECOWAS communiqué”, which it supports. On Wednesday, ECOWAS announced the suspension of Guinea and the sending of a diplomatic mission to the country, but did not pronounce any economic sanctions.
Alpha Condé’s physical integrity in question
This mission, made up of foreign ministers from four countries and the chairman of the ECOWAS commission, Jean-Claude Kassi Brou, arrived early Friday afternoon in the Guinean capital Conakry. ECOWAS had also “demanded respect for physical integrity” and the “immediate release” of President Alpha Condé “, captured by the putschists on Sunday.
The Guinean special forces led by their commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, announced on Sunday that they had captured the Head of State to put an end to “financial mismanagement, poverty and endemic corruption” or “the instrumentalisation of justice (and) the trampling of citizens’ rights ”. They dissolved the government and institutions and abolished the Constitution that Alpha Condé had adopted in 2020 and which he had used to run for a third term in the same year, despite months of murderous contestation.