The court granted Moussa Dadis Camara a plea for a postponement on health concerns on Monday, putting an end to the appearance of the former dictator that had been the most eagerly anticipated event since the start of the Guinea massacre trial in September 2009.
The moment of the appearance arrived late morning when President Ibrahima Sory Tounkara said: “Mr Moussa Dadis Camara, come to the bar, please.
Less than 12 minutes later, the same president pronounced the postponement of the case to December 12, 2022, with these words: “You have one week Mr Camara, the hearing is adjourned.”
In the meantime, the 57-year-old former autocrat, who used to make those who suffered his wrath tremble, obsequiously pleaded for the adjournment, citing his health.
“With all due respect to your august court – I have already informed the director of the prison guard, the chief medical officer of the prison guard – for a very long time I have been suffering,” said Captain Camara after taking the stand with an unsteady gait and in civilian clothes, he who never took off his uniform.
“I am not above the law,” he said, “but in all sincerity, I don’t feel at the moment that I am in a state to testify.
The main defendant in this historic trial vaguely referred to “malaria I had, a total weakening”, and suggested that he preferred not to elaborate.
“The court cannot force you to say or do what you do not want to do If you say you cannot (testify), the court will follow you,” the president said before announcing the adjournment.
Along with a dozen other former military and government officials, Captain Camara has been on trial since September 28, 2022, for the atrocity that happened exactly 13 years earlier.
The red berets of Captain Camara’s guard, soldiers, police, and militia slaughtered hundreds of civilians in and around a stadium in Conakry who had assembled to prevent him from running for president in January 2010. Captain Camara had taken control in a coup nine months previously. Numerous bodies were dumped, people were kidnapped and tortured, and dozens of women were raped.
A few months after the slaughter, he was sent to Burkina Faso, and when he returned for the trial, he was put in prison.
