Africa, Crime & Justice, Headlines, Human Rights

DEATH PENALTY: Will It Be Reactivated in Guinea – Again?

Saliou Samb

CONAKRY, Dec 11 2006 (IPS) - Behind bars, away from intrusive stares, the prisoners most recently sentenced to death in Guinea wait to hear their fate. The last time executions were carried out in this West African country was in 2001.

The country’s two most famous inmates are housed at Kindia prison in eastern Guinea, about 135 km from Conakry, the capital. They are diamond-dealer Malick Conde, 26, and police officer Cleophace Lamah, 30.

Conde and Lamah are accused having savagely murdered diamond merchant Mohamed Toure in Conakry in 2000. After strangling him and binding his hands and feet, they broke his neck and a leg and stuffed him in a box, all to rob him of about 20 precious gems.

Lamah, a former member of an organised crime squad, had befriended Conde and served as his protector. They were arrested in October 2000 and sentenced to death in August 2005.

They join nine others who were sent to death row here this year. The men have also been sentenced to death by the Conakry Court of Assizes in 2006 for having slit the throat of a neighbourhood leader in the capital.

Their cells are grim; the only real furniture is a couple of wooden benches. It is impossible to know exactly what takes place in the mountaintop silence of Kindia’s cells, where most of those condemned to death are doomed to reflect upon their fate.

Perhaps they had a bit of hope. The death penalty, reintroduced in 1984, has only been implemented once – against seven criminals -, in 2001.

Sentenced six years earlier by the Conakry Court of Assizes, they were shot by a firing squad at Kindia after being brusquely awakened in the middle of the night.

The decision to “reactivate the death penalty” was taken by then minister of justice Abou Camara, who wanted to end the climate of insecurity that reigned when Guinea was attacked by rebels from neighbouring Liberia in 2000 and was subject to an uncontrolled influx of war weapons.

Now, human rights activists and the prisoners themselves believe public pressure may reactivate the death penalty once more. The public, they fear, believes that executing prisoners will bring an end to the ever-increasing violence.

During his last tour around the country before dying from an illness in November, Guinean Minister of Security Ibrahima Dieng, responding to demands from the populace, publicly called for the execution of death row inmates to take place more quickly. The government did not object to this remark.

A recent illustration of the attractiveness of the death penalty to the Guinean public: In July, 15 men suspected of being involved in a murder were burned alive after being soaked in acid in Nzerekore, in the south of the country, before the authorities were able to restore calm.

“Under the First Republic (1958-1984), sometimes for political motives, criminals were hung in public to be made an example of. People wrongly think that the death penalty is a deterrent to crime, but all the studies show the contrary,” says Alpha Amadou Bano Barry, a professor of sociology at the University of Conakry.

“We’re applying bad solutions to real problems. To effectively stamp out crime you need … to combat poverty and unemployment, in order to provide everyone with the basic services that they are entitled to,” Barry emphasised.

The fact that the overwhelming majority of Guineans are Muslim – more than 80 percent of its eight million inhabitants – may help explain the country’s prevailing attitude toward crime. Many Muslims, according to Barry, favour the death penalty.

Moreover, human rights lawyers say, the government must first prove that it is capable of being fair and just before it can apply the ultimate punishment.

“The death penalty only makes sense if the judicial system respects all the rules regarding penal proceedings. Such is not the case in Guinea,” Conakry jurist Youssouf Sylla told IPS.

Thierno Maadjou Sow, president of the Guinean Organisation for Human Rights (OGDH), adds that he is critical of the torture which continues to take place at military and local and national police installations.

“The first regime offered people employment opportunities, even though it was itself guilty of committing crimes. This explains the low crime rate during that time,” Sow said.

Importantly, the death penalty should only be used on prisoners who are deemed unsafe for society. Those executed in 2001 all expressed profound remorse during visits from OGDH members to Kindia Prison, Sow said.

The seven men executed in 2001 “were so afraid to die and had so reflected upon their crimes, that I’m convinced that if given a second chance, they would have been salvageable, from a societal point of view,” he said.

It is a tale that has the current death row inmates worried. “Malick (Conde) says that when he thinks of the case of the seven prisoners executed in 2001, he has trouble sleeping at night. He’s very afraid at night,” Paul Youmba Kourouma, his lawyer, told IPS.

Kourouma believes that Conde has been wrongly condemned.

“I’m for the death penalty because I think that there are infractions that are so serious that death is the only sanction. But I don’t agree with Malick’s sentence in this case because the truth of the matter was never brought out,” he said.

“Even the medical examiner acknowledged in court that Toure was killed by an experienced specialist in combat techniques, which completely matches Cleophace’s (Lamah’s) profile,” said Kourouma. “If the Supreme Court rejects our appeal, our only remaining recourse will be a presidential pardon.”

Lamah was defended by court-appointed attorneys, but during the trial and given the military manner in which Toure was killed, opinions were unanimous that he was in fact the murderer. Still, he sought to pin co-authorship of the crime on Malick. It was also proven during the trial that Lamah tried to poison him in prison.

Moreover, Kourouma charges that the government has roughly mistreated the prisoners.

Conde and Lamah had their arms tightly bound to their backs with ropes for the 135-kilometre trip to Kindia after they were sentenced to death, he said.

“Such treatment caused them to lose the use of their upper limbs during a period of about two months. That’s very serious,” the lawyer said.