Nine days after the coup attempt against him, Guinea-Bissau President Umaro Sissoco Embaló accuses three people of being responsible for the failed putsch.
The President of Guinea-Bissau, Umaro Sissoco Embaló, said this Thursday, February 10 that three people were behind the February 1 coup attempt. An attempted coup against the backdrop of drug trafficking. It would indeed be people previously arrested in the United States for drug trafficking.
Indeed, the former Admiral Bubo Na Tchuto, imprisoned in the United States between 2013 and 2016 after being accused of wanting to import drugs into the United States, would be at the origin of the putsch attempt, according to the About Umaro Sissoco Embaló.
According to the President of Guinea-Bissau, the associates of the former soldier, Tchamy Yala and Papis Djeme, also pinned down for "narcoterrorism", were present at the government palace on February 1.
“I saw them with my own eyes, they were looking to kill me, the Prime Minister and the whole government. Na Tchuto was not present, but he was probably behind the attack,” Embaló assured reporters yesterday.
And the president continues his story: “When the shots were fired in the government palace, Bubo was at Marine Corps headquarters. And I heard the attackers say that they were going to call him to send reinforcements”.
Former putschists and Casamance rebels also in the dock
According to Umaro Sissoco Embaló, other people were also involved in the assault on the government palace, including several who had participated in the assassination of former president Nino Vieira in 2009. The president finally claims that rebels from the south Senegalese, from Casamance, would also be involved.
Accusatory statements from the Bissau-Guinean Head of State, who preferred to play the card of transparency after the coup attempt in his country. With the wave of putschs that have shaken the West African region in recent months, public opinion this time considered the coup that was taking place in Guinea-Bissau to be illegitimate.
Umaro Sissoco Embaló, known for his outspokenness and his popularity with young people, will be, if he completes his mandate which runs until 2024, the second president not to have been overthrown in Guinea-Bissau. The country has experienced a dozen putschs, successful or failed, in its history.
And apart from Embaló's predecessor, who was able to finish his term, all the country's heads of state were systematically overthrown.