Guinean state television has aired images of the country’s most wanted fugitive, Colonel Claude Pivi, after his arrest and extradition from Liberia following a high-profile prison escape in November.
Pivi was one of the henchmen of former dictator Moussa Dadis Camara, who ruled the West African country from 2008 to 2010.
In July, Pivi was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity over his involvement in a 2009 massacre.
He had been on the run since being broken out of Conakry’s central prison in November.
Guinean Justice Minister Yaya Kairaba Kaba on Thursday confirmed Pivi’s arrest, suggesting he had been extradited and taken to the central prison in the capital.
But Pivi’s lawyer, Abdourahmane Dabo, said his client not in Conakry.
Kaba said Pivi had been taken to Coyah prison, around 40 kilometres (25 miles) northeast of the capital, in an interview broadcast by French media outlet RFI on Friday.
Kaba said Pivi, who is diabetic, was incarcerated in Coyah due to “his precarious state of health”.
“The central prison in Coyah is a brand new prison”, he said, adding it had “all the amenities of all the central prisons in Guinea, in line with international standards”.
Guinean state television, which is controlled by the ruling junta, broadcast images late Thursday of a frail-looking Pivi getting out of an armoured vehicle with the help of security forces.
Pivi, a former minister of presidential security, was in November broken out of prison along with former dictator Dadis Camara and two others on trial over the 2009 massacre.
All except Pivi were recaptured the same day.
On September 28, 2009, at least 156 people were killed by gunfire, knives, machetes, or bayonets in a massacre at an opposition rally at Conakry stadium, according to a UN-mandated international commission of inquiry.
Hundreds more were wounded and at least 109 women were raped, and abuses carried on for days afterwards against more women who were kidnapped.
Detainees were tortured in what is considered one of the darkest pages in Guinea’s history.
