I. Background

Shortly before noon on September 28, 2009, several hundred members of Guinea’s security forces burst into a stadium in Guinea’s capital, Conakry, and opened fire on tens of thousands of opposition supporters peacefully gathered there.[3] By late afternoon, at least 150 Guineans lay dead or dying in and around the stadium.

Inside the complex, bodies lay strewn across the field, crushed against half-opened gates, draped over walls, and piled outside locker room doors pulled shut by the terrified few who had managed to get inside them. There was also evidence of violence outside the stadium, where security forces and men in civilian dress armed with sticks and knives had waited for panicked opposition supporters escaping from the main stadium. Among those killed outside the stadium was a man who was trying to use his taxi parked outside to assist the wounded. Members of the elite Presidential Guard, commonly referred to as “red berets,” had approached him and demanded the keys, then shot him dead when he refused.

Dozens of women at the rally suffered particularly brutal forms of sexual violence at the hands of the security forces, including individual and gang rape and sexual assault with objects such as sticks, batons, rifle butts, and bayonets. At least four women and girls were murdered during or immediately after being raped. In addition to the rapes at the stadium, five victims whom Human Rights Watch interviewed described being taken by the Presidential Guard to at least two private residences, where they endured days and nights of gang rape and other forms of physical and psychological abuse.

During the afternoon and evening of September 28, tens of soldiers wearing red berets also ransacked the houses of three opposition party leaders. In addition, in the hours and days after the stadium violence, heavily armed soldiers dressed in camouflage and wearing red berets, and civilians armed with knives, machetes, and sticks, committed scores of abuses in those neighborhoods where the majority of participants in the September 28 rally lived. In some cases, the soldiers and armed civilians appeared to be collaborating to commit abuses.

In the hours and days following the violence, as desperate mothers, fathers, and other family members attempted to find their loved ones, the security forces engaged in an organized cover-up to hide the number of dead. Security forces sealed off the stadium and morgues, removed scores of bodies, and buried them in mass graves.

A Human Rights Watch investigation found that most killings, sexual assaults, and other abuses were committed by members of the Presidential Guard, in particular the unit directly responsible at the time for the personal security of Guinea’s president, Moussa Dadis Camara. Others who committed serious abuses included gendarmes, police, and men in civilian clothes armed with machetes and knives.

The evidence that Human Rights Watch gathered suggested that the killings, rapes, and other abuses that were committed by the security forces on and after September 28, 2009 rise to the level of crimes against humanity due to their widespread and systematic nature and evidence that the crimes were premeditated and organized.

A commission of inquiry established by the United Nations secretary-general (International Commission of Inquiry) had similar conclusions, stating: “The [c]ommission believes that it is reasonable to conclude that the crimes perpetrated on 28 September 2009 and in the immediate aftermath can be described as crimes against humanity. These crimes are part of a widespread and systematic attack launched by the Presidential Guard, the police responsible for combating drug trafficking and organized crime and the militia, among others, against the civilian population.”[4]

A national commission of inquiry established by the Guinean government also found in February 2010 that murder and rape were committed during the September 28 violence. However, contrary to investigations by Human Rights Watch and the ICOI, the commission found that the death toll was less than 75 and that the former president was not implicated in the crimes.[5]