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Guinea junta chief ‘holed up in Burkina villa’

Romaric Ollo Hien. AFP — Feb. 20, 2010

Ouagadougou — Three months after surviving a bullet wound to the head in an assassination bid, Guinea's junta chief Moussa Dadis Camara is holed up in a Ouagadougou luxury villa, out of view of the media, sources said.

Here, there are no squads of “red berets” like those at the Alpha Yaya Diallo military camp in Conakry where “Dadis” was constantly surrounded by soldiers after a coup carried him to power at the end of 2008.

In the upper-crust suburb of Ouga 2000, there is no security guard visible in front of the house that Burkina Faso's president allocated to Camara for his convalescence, just hundreds of metres from the presidential palace.

Only “six or seven soldiers” are posted in the courtyard, according to sources close to Burkina president Blaise Compaore, who regularly comes to visit Dadis to break his isolation.

The junta chief chief does not seem the same after December 3, when his assistant lieutenant Aboubakar Sidiki Diakité nicknamed “Toumba”, tried to kill him by shooting him in the head.

The two had quarrelled about their role in a massacre of opposition supporters on September 28 in a Conakry stadium, in which some 156 people died according to the United Nations.

Wounded in the head, Dadis was treated for five weeks in a military hospital in Rabat, Morocco, before making a surprise arrival on January 12 in Ouagadougou.

A short while after, it was an unrecognisable Dadis who appeared in front of the cameras.

Thinner and without his customary red beret a long scar could be seen running down his cranium, while his eyes were void of their usual keenness.

He laboriously read out a message ratifying the choice of General Sekouba Konate to lead the country's interim government from military to civilian rule in a six month transition that would result in elections in June.

At present three doctors — two Moroccans and a Guinean — are following his progress as he embarks on a program to rehabilitate both arms and his right foot. He also needs to recover from a pulmonary embolism.

A military source has confirmed that his wife Jeanne is at his side, as well has his nephew ‘Theo’: “his right hand man who does his shopping for him.”

‘Theo’ is police officer Theodore Kourouma who was also implicated in the September massacre.

Before his attempted assassination, the extremely voluble Dadis would entertain lengthy exchanges with reporters.

He created controversy with regular diatribes on Guinean television on programmes nicknamed the “Dadis show” where he directly attacked soldiers, diplomats and ministers.

However at present, “taking into account his state, he does not want to see the media,” explained a top Burkina Faso army official who visits Camara “almost every day.”

The same source said Camara “almost never leaves but telephones a lot.”

On Monday he received the governor of Guinea's central bank, Alassane Barry, a week after meeting politicians from Senegal and Guinea.

Ironically, the house where he is cloistered previously housed Guinean politician Alpha Conde, an opposition leader particularly reviled by Dadis, who often criticised him.