CONAKRY, Guinea (AP) — Guinea’s most wanted fugitive, a former senior military officer convicted of crimes against humanity over a 2009 stadium massacre, has been extradited from neighboring Liberia, officials said Thursday.
Former Col. Claude Pivi had been on the run following a high-profile prison escape in November, before he was arrested in Liberia on Tuesday, Yaya Kairaba Kaba, Guinea’s minister of justice, told reporters.
Pivi was a henchmen of former dictator Moussa Dadis Camara, who ruled the West African country from 2008 to 2010. He had been sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity over his involvement in the stadium massacre. At least 157 people were killed and dozens of women raped in that massacre in 2009.
The then-military leader had staged a coup the previous year and on Sept. 28, 2009, demonstrators at the stadium were protesting Camara’s plans to run for president when soldiers opened fire on them.
The junta at the time said “uncontrolled” elements of the army had carried out the rapes and killings. But Camara’s top aides were at the stadium and did nothing to stop the massacre, a Human Rights Watch report said.
Many of the victims in the stadium were shot, crushed or knifed to death while some of the women were dragged out from hiding and gang-raped by uniformed men over several days, witnesses have said.
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