Leading opposition figures Ibrahima Diallo and Oumar Sylla, alias Foniké Mengué, have announced the start of a hunger strike to denounce their detention in Guinea for the past three months, without any judicial proceedings having been opened against them to date.
The lawyer of both opponents, Salif Beavogui, has indicated that the protest started on Monday and stressed that both ask the authorities to comply within a «reasonable» time with the judicial procedures in view of the opening of a trial or their release.
«It’s sad, it’s heartbreaking. To have the right to a fair and equitable process, my clients have started a hunger strike», said the lawyer in declarations granted to the Guinean news portal Media Guinée, without the authorities of the African country having pronounced themselves on the matter.
Thus, Beavogui regretted that his defendants have been «put between a rock and a hard place» in the absence of proceedings against them and stressed that «he thought that no Guinean would have to undergo biological suffering and deprive himself of food to ask for a fair trial».
«However, here we are. I would like this hunger strike not to last because of the Dixxin prosecutor calling me to set a hearing date. I truly hope so and my clients truly hope so,» the lawyer reiterated.
Diallo and Sylla were arrested at the end of July after a series of demonstrations called by unions, parties and civil society organizations against the military junta that has ruled the country since the coup d’état of September 2021, mobilizations that resulted in five deaths.
The leader of the junta, Mamady Doumbouya, said at the end of October that experts from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the country have developed a timetable to consolidate the transition to democracy in 24 months, which is one year less than previously planned.
The uprising followed months of political crisis in the country due to the decision of the former president Alpha Condé to modify the Constitution to run for a third term and his victory in the 2020 presidential elections, in which the other candidates, including Diallo, denounced fraud.
