What Really Happened The Night Guinea-Bissau's President was Killed

Guinea Bissau: Double assassination


I was drinking a coffee at Baiana when the Afropop music played by the local radio suddenly stopped. A frantic speaker was trying to report about a blast that had just killed a few soldiers, destroying the military headquarters.

I jumped in my car and drove toward the military compound. When I arrived everyone was shouting and running through the smoky ruins of the building. Bissau’s only ambulance was coming and going from the hospital to pick up the bodies of the victims. Four heavily armed soldiers pointing their AK-47 at my face discouraged me from taking photographs or asking questions. All they told me was that General Batista Tagme Na Wai, head of the army, had just been assassinated. I went back to the car and headed to the hospital.

On this night last February Bissau’s sleepy routine was broken. I made some phone calls to find out what was going on, even as the Minister of Defense arrived at the hospital and ordered the police to keep journalists away. After two hours trying to get information I left the hospital, heading to my hotel. At the reception everyone was trading theories. Someone said it was a coup d’etat, others that it was an accident, a bomb, or the beginning of another civil war. I went to my room and tried to sleep.

At six in the morning my friend and informant Vladimir, a reliable security man who works at the hotel, knocked on my door. He was frightened, and told me that the president had just been killed. When I asked him how he knew, he simply shook his head. I instantly left my room and went to the President’s house. Soldiers there were shooting in the air, to keep a little crowd of people away from the house.

A bunch of soldiers with machine guns and bazookas surrounded the block. The president’s armored Hummer was still parked in front of the house, the tires flat and its bulletproof windows shattered. The police cars from his escort were destroyed. A rocket shot from a bazooka had penetrated four walls, ending up in the president’s living room. Joao Bernardo Vieira was dead, after ruling Guinea Bissau for nearly a quarter of a century.

After a few hours waiting in front of the house I understand I wouldn’t have been allowed any access this day. A soldier came toward me and seized my camera to check if I had taken any pictures. Fortunately I had not, and he gave me the camera back. It was time to leave.
In just nine hours Guinea Bissau had lost both it president and the head of its army. Why so much violence? Was this double assassination the result of an old rivalry between Vieira and Tagme, or was it something more?

The army’s spokesman, Zamora Induta, declared that the president had been killed by a group of renegade soldiers and that assailants using a bomb had assassinated General Tagme. He said there is no connection between the two deaths. Of course, nobody believed that this was so.

In the last few years Guinea Bissau had become a major hub for cocaine trafficking. The drug is shipped from Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil to West Africa en route to its final destination in Europe. Were these assassinations linked to drug trafficking?

After paying a useless visit to the president’s house, I headed back to the military headquarters, where the situation was still tense but the press was finally allowed in. I took some pictures of the destroyed building and sneaked out from the generals’ view, reaching a backyard where some soldiers were resting, sipping tea under a big tree. I joined them, trying to be friendly. I offered cigarettes and had tea in return, so we started to talk about what happened to General Tagme Na Wai and to President Vieira, when Paul -- the chief of a special commando unit from the region of Mansoa -- told me they had had a hell of night. He wore a denim cowboy hat and two cartridge belts across his body, in perfect Rambo style.

At first I thought he was referring to the general situation, but then he proudly told me that he and his men were sent to the president’s house, to kill him. It was noon, the sun higher than ever. My blood froze. My first reaction was actually not to react. I simply answered with a skeptical “really”, and let him talk.

“The President is responsible for his own death,” said Paul, in French.
“We went to the house, to question Nino (as the president was called) about the bomb that killed Tagme Na Wai. When we arrived he was trying to flee, with his wife, so we forced them to stay. When we asked if he issued the order to kill Tagme, he first denied his responsibility but then confessed. He said he bought the bomb during his last trip to France and ordered that it be placed under the staircase, by Tagme’s office. He didn’t want to give the names of those who brought the bomb here, or the name of the person who placed it.”

At this point, the quality of the details started to convince me that Paul wasn’t lying.
“You know, Nino was a brave man but this time he really did something wrong. So we had to kill him. After all, he killed Tagme and made our life impossible… we are not receiving our salary since six months ago."

“So, what happened after you questioned him” - I asked.
“Well, after that we shoot him and then we took his powers away. Nino was a dangerous man, a very powerful person”.

“And what about his wife?”

“She doesn’t have anything to do with that, so we didn’t have any reason to kill her. She was crying and she urinated in her own clothes, so after shooting Nino we took her out of the kitchen. We respect Nino’s wife. She’s a good woman.”

The whole tale was surrealistic and I didn’t quite understand what “taking his powers away” meant.

“Nino had some special powers…”, explains Paul, reflecting a strongly held local belief about the long-time ruler. “…We needed to make sure he won’t come back for revenge. So we hacked his body, with a machete; the hands, the arms, the legs, his belly and his head. Now he’s really dead”. Paul erupts in a smoky laugh, followed by his men.

I give a quick look to the soldiers’ uniforms, and I see that three of them have blood on their boots and pants. I keep on playing the part, and tell them I understand what they did. Then I ask for permission to make portraits of them, with my camera. After I took the picture, Paul led me into an abandoned corner of a warehouse, within the military compound.

“I have something you could buy, do you want to see?” He called one of his men who came with a black bag. “How much would you pay for that?” - he asked me, his eyes wide-open, as he showed me the president’s satellite phone, stolen from his house few hours before.

“Why should I buy a used satellite phone?,” I said, trying to show as little interest as possible. “I don’t know… what’s your price?”

It was clear that Paul didn’t have a clue. “…Nine thousand Euros, and it’s yours.” I laughed, and said I couldn’t afford that price. So I offered him one more cigarette, and I left.

I spent the next two hours thinking about all the information that was possibly stored in this device. The phone numbers and evidence that would possibly connect Guinea Bissau’s former president with some drug cartels in other countries.

I absolutely needed this phone, but didn’t want to show my interest. I went back to the military headquarters, with an excuse, when Paul spontaneously approached me again. He offered me the phone, once again, and told me I could make the price. I offered 300 Euros. I bought it for 600.

The next day, I managed to visit the president’s house with my camera. One of his several cousins gives me a tour. He led me to the kitchen first, to show me where Nino Vieira was executed. The blood was all over the room. The machete was still on the floor and the bulletproof vest he always wore was on the chair where his wife sat during the questioning. All around there were hundreds of bullets from AK-47 and machine guns. The soldiers looted and destroyed the house. They took everything they could, including clothes and food.

Nino Vieira’s and Tagme Na Wai’s brutal assassinations reflects much more than a mere confrontation between the Papel, the ethnic group to which the President belonged, and the Balanta, Tagme’s ethnic group. It certainly goes beyond the personal settling of accounts.
The spiral of violence began in November 2008, when the head of the navy, Rear Admiral Americo Bubo Na Tchuto, suddenly left Bissau, after the president accused him of plotting a coup d’etat. A month later, in December, the international press reported what appeared to be a “failed attempt at a coup d’etat”, made by 12 soldiers who attacked the presidential compound. But this failed coup was actually about something more.

According to Calvario Ahukharie, the incorruptible national director of Interpol and a crime expert, this escalation of violence is just one piece of a war to gain more control, and personal benefits, over drug trafficking. “The Army, the Navy and the President are all involved – Nino was number one and Tagme number two, and they were competing,” he told me. “Someone had to fall.”

by Marco Vernaschi

Learn more about this reporting project

The Rest @ The Pulitzer Center

Guinea-Bissau: Cassamma's Agunentas Fired Near Batista Tagme Na Wai

BISSAU (Reuters) - Guinea-Bissau's military said on Tuesday the armed forces chief had been fired on by militiamen hired to protect the president and ordered the militia to be disbanded.
But a presidential guard officer said the incident at midnight on Sunday was an accident and not an attempt to kill armed forces chief General Batista Tagme Na Wai.

The row over the shooting reflected tension between Na Wai, who has criticised some of President Joao Bernardo "Nino" Vieira's decisions and appointments, and Vieira, who survived an attack on his residence by renegade soldiers in November.

Since independence in 1974, the former Portuguese colony in West Africa has had a history of coups and military mutinies.

"At midnight on January 4 ... General Batista Tagme Na Wai was aimed at by a burst of gunfire fired by Aguentas militia mobilised and armed by Interior Minister Cipriano Cassama," the armed forces command said in a statement broadcast by state media. No injuries were reported from the incident.

A presidential guard officer said the AK-47 automatic rifle of one of Vieira's guard had gone off while General Na Wai and his escort were passing. "It wasn't an assassination attempt," adjutant Albino Bogra told reporters.

Guinea-Bissau, whose main export is cashew nuts, is among the poorest countries in the world. Its security has been threatened in recent years by Colombian cocaine cartels using its territory to smuggle drugs to Europe.

The interior ministry had recruited a 400-strong force of militia, known as Aguentas, to be Vieira's personal bodyguard after the president was the target of a machinegun and rocket-propelled grenade attack on his residence on November 23

The Rest @ All Africa.com

Six Guinea-Bissau Soldeirs Fail to Assissinate their President

President Joao Bernardo Vieira narrowly escaped by hiding in a room in his heavily fortified residence while security forces fought back, only managing to turn back the soldiers after a three-hour gunbattle....

(where was Batista Tagme Na Wai? He has now arresed a Navy Sergeant in an attempted to again implicate

-Shimron)

....On Monday, the president of the tiny West African country returned to work, meeting with diplomats and overseeing the creation of a commission that will investigate the attempted coup, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.

Col. Armando Nhaga confirmed that the arrested six soldiers were being questioned. Three others fled after the battle.

He said that among those still at large is Ntcham Yala, a navy sergeant who is believed to be close to the ousted head of the navy, Rear Adm. Bubo Na Tchuto.

Na Tchuto was placed under house arrest in August after being accused of attempting to orchestrate a coup. But he escaped six days later, fleeing by sea to neighboring Gambia, where he was briefly arrested and then released, Nhaga said.

Na Tchuto could not be located for comment Monday but he has previously denied involvement in the prior foiled coup.

• The U.N. says Guinea-Bissau is a key transit point for cocaine smuggled from Latin America to Europe.
• The government estimates that as much as 1,750 pounds of cocaine transits the country's borders each week, most of it flown in small planes from South America.
  U.N. drug officials believe the traffickers drop off the drugs on the uninhabited islands that dot the country's coastline.
• It's a territory that until August was under the control of Na Tchuto's navy.
  Sunday's attack came days after the government announced the provisional results of last week's parliamentary elections, which saw the party of former President Kumba Yala lose a fifth of its delegates.
• Yala rejected the results even though international observers deemed them legitimate.
  Since winning independence from Portugal in 1973, Guinea-Bissau has suffered multiple coups and a civil war.
• Vieira himself came to power in a 1980 coup, while Kumba Yala was deposed in one in 2003.

The Rest @ Africa AP

Posted to the web 23 November 2008

Soldiers attacked the residence of President João Bernardo Vieira of Guinea-Bissau in the early hours of Sunday in what appeared to be post-election instability, news agencies report.

• Reuters reported that Shola Omoregie, the United Nations Secretary-General's representative in Guinea-Bissau, said the president and his family had survived the attack but that "the situation is very serious."
• The agency quoted military chief General Batista Tagme Na Wai as saying five attackers had been arrested, "and the situation is under control.
• The Associated Press reported the interior minister, Cipriano Cassama, as saying one member of the presidential guard had been killed and several injured.
• The BBC's West Africa correspondent described the assault as an apparent attempt at a coup.
• Election officials announced on Friday that the former ruling party, PAIGC (the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, founded by Amílcar Cabral), had won parliamentary elections held on November 16.
• The recent breakdown of a stability pact had caused concern that the country was too unstable to hold elections.

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General Batista Tagme Na Wai Promises to Attack Traffickers

Keep an eye on General Batista Tagme Na Wai. The article that follows looks like the front-stage theatrical act to hide back-stage collusion. What did his financial transactions look like after his people began intimidating local police holding traffickers who were mysteriously released?

-Shimron

Guinea-Bissau's military will shoot down any aircraft that enters its airspace without permission as part of efforts to fight drug-trafficking by criminal gangs in the West African state, its top officer said.

Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Batista Tagme Na Wai promised a "crusade" against narcotics smuggling in the tiny, poor nation on the Atlantic coast, which experts say is used by drugs cartels as a staging post to smuggle cocaine to Europe.

Guinea-Bissau authorities say shipments of Colombian cocaine seized by local police have been flown in by small planes from Latin America to bush airstrips. The drugs are then flown or shipped out of the country to Europe by the traffickers.

• "We will shoot down every plane that tries to violate our air space without previous permission from the authorities," Na Wai told reporters late on Thursday.
• He added stores of aircraft fuel used by drugs smugglers had been found and seized.
• The general said anti-aircraft batteries had been installed in the offshore Bijagos islands
• The International Institute for Strategic Studies, which reports on the strength of armies around the world, lists the Guinea-Bissau military as possessing Russian-made anti-aircraft guns and SAM SA-7 ground-to-air missiles but it was not clear how many of these weapons were operational.
• Guinea-Bissau's government, police and military have faced international criticism for not doing enough to combat the cocaine trafficking, but they say they do not have enough equipment and technology and have demanded more foreign aid.
• In July, the country formally adopted the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime as part of its efforts to crack down against the traffickers.

The Rest @ Javno

Batista Tagme Na Wai How far up does the Coruption go?

It appears someone high on Batista Tagme Na Wai staff, or he himself, has been hired by drug traffickers for protection, check contacts with known FARC and/or Venezuelan connections.

-Shimron

Guinea-Bissau Continues to Destabilize

BISSAU (Reuters) - Military officers in Guinea-Bissau tried to stage a coup last week as the West African nation faced a political crisis, the armed forces spokesman said on Friday.

Lieutenant-Colonel Arsenio Balde said Rear-Admiral Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto, the head of the navy, was in custody and other officers were being questioned about the attempt. He said the situation was under control.

"A military commission of inquiry has been set up and all those implicated in this attempted coup are being questioned to shed light on this affair," Balde told reporters in the capital Bissau. "We have Americo Bubo Na Tchuto in our hands," he said.

He said officers toured barracks in the West African country last week, trying to enlist support for military intervention to end a political crisis while Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Batista Tagme Na Wai was abroad.

• Na Tchuto's arrest on Wednesday added to a deepening political crisis in the former Portuguese colony, which has come under increasing diplomatic pressure to curb a booming international cocaine trade.
• Within the past week, President Joao Bernardo Vieira has dissolved parliament and appointed a new prime minister after the Supreme Court declared the lawmakers' mandate invalid and the opposition withdrew from the unity government.
• Legislative elections are not scheduled until November.
• Guinea-Bissau is no stranger to coups and instability, having been shaken by a series of crises since independence in 1974, but it is now under international scrutiny over its role in the multi-billion-dollar global cocaine trade.

Taking advantage of long, porous borders and poor policing, smugglers have turned Guinea-Bissau into a transit point for cocaine on its way from Latin America to Europe.
Some political analysts say local civilian and military authorities are complicit.

Last month, two planes were seized in Bissau. International drug experts were allowed on board one of them only after a standoff between two branches of the security services.

The plane was found to be empty but sniffer dogs confirmed it had carried cocaine. The head of the control tower was subsequently arrested and the deputy head of the air force is wanted for questioning, security sources said.

Drug experts have said the drugs trade and rivalry between factions involved in it risked aggravating instability in weak countries in West Africa.

Guinea-Bissau's northern neighbour Senegal said late on Thursday it had sent a minister to Bissau after Vieira spoke to Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade on the subject.

The Rest @ Reuters Africa

BISSAU, Aug 8 (Reuters) - Military officers in Guinea-Bissau tried to stage a coup while Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Batista Tagme Na Wai was abroad last week, Na Wai's spokesman said on Friday.
Lieutenant-Colonel Arsenio Balde said Rear-Admiral Jose Americo Bubo Na Tchuto, the head of the Navy, was in custody and other officers were being questioned in connection with the "attempted coup". He said the situation was now under control. (Reporting by Alberto Dabo)

The Rest @ alertnet

Batista Tagme Na Wai continues Narco Intimidation In Guinea-Bissau

Keep an eye on Batista Tagme Na Wai General of Guinea-Bissau's Army.

• He Threatened and Intimidated the Guinea-Bissau National Chief of Police when she was holding drug cartel suspects, releasing them.
• The UN tried to Board a plane suspected of carrying drugs from Latin America, creating stand-off between the judicial police tasked with combating drugs crimes and military personnel who tried to prevent police boarding the aircraft.
• Now, Genral Batista Tagme Na Wai, "suspended and disarmed" The head of the Navy, (Rear-Admiral Jose) Americo Bubo Na Tchuto yesterday. (See below)

I suggest his contacts with South and Central American drug traffickers bear analysis.

-Shimron
see bellow
BISSAU, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Guinea-Bissau has suspended its navy chief in a further jolt to the country's establishment after the government and parliament were dissolved this week, an armed forces official and a security source said on Thursday.

President Joao Bernardo Vieira faces a constitutional crisis at the same time as the United Nations and Western donors are pressing for more decisive action to tackle Latin American gangs who smuggle cocaine via the country's shoreline and airstrips.

"The head of the Navy, (Rear-Admiral Jose) Americo Bubo Na Tchuto was suspended and disarmed yesterday by the head of the armed forces, General Batista Tagme Na Wai," said an official at the armed forces headquarters who declined to be named.

The official said Na Tchuto was under house arrest, which a United Nations official and a security source confirmed.

U.N. officials have piled pressure on Guinea-Bissau to combat drug smuggling since two planes suspected of being used by traffickers were seized at its main airport last month.

The seizures led to a stand-off between the judicial police tasked with combating drugs crimes and military personnel who tried to prevent police boarding the aircraft. No drugs were found but three Venezuelan nationals were arrested.

The airport's two senior air traffic control officials were also arrested, adding credence to suspicions among U.N. and international anti-drug enforcement officers that officials in Guinea-Bissau's establishment were involved in drug smuggling.

"Planes land and take off any old how...just as boats dock and leave again without the state authorities even being informed about it," Vieira said on Wednesday at the inauguration of new Prime Minister Carlos Correia.

Vieira appointed Correia, an old ally, to fill the power vacuum left when the Supreme Court ruled a law extending the assembly's mandate until elections in November was illegal.
That forced Vieira to dissolve parliament, effectively terminating the government's term of office too.

Na Tchuto's suspension is a new blow to stability in Guinea-Bissau, which has suffered a string of military coups and mutinies since it won independence in 1974 after a bitter and destructive war with colonial power Portugal.

The Rest @ Africa Reuters

Guinea-Bissau's Military Structure

BISSAU, June 25 (Reuters) - Imagine an army with more officers than soldiers, a penchant for coups and for meddling in politics, but no tanks or planes to defend the nation.

These are Guinea-Bissau's armed forces, the remnants of a once proud guerrilla army which won the small West African state independence from Portugal in 1974 after a bush war.

Since then, the army has tarnished its image with a series of bloody coups and mutinies, a fratricidal 1998-1999 civil war, and a 2004 revolt that killed the army chief.

Foreign donors are worried that senior members of the armed forces are now collaborating with Colombian cocaine cartels which use the small coastal nation -- one of the poorest countries in the world -- as a transit hub for drug shipments. .....

.......A U.N.-funded census of the forces threw up some astonishing figures:

• Of nearly 4,500 members registered, more than 3,000 were officers, 1,800 of them holding the rank of major or above.
• Of the 4,500, only six were younger than 20, and there must be hundreds older than 60 ... it's an old army and it has no plain soldiers," said Verastegui, adding that its ranks were bloated by veterans from the 1963-1974 independence war.
• The army fought dissident Senegalese Casamance separatists on its northern border only two years ago, but Verastegui said there were "more people sitting at home than under arms".
• "It's an army where the soldiers aren't in the barracks, where the real reason for wearing a uniform is ... to have a meal and a pension," said the Spanish army general, a 56-year-old artillery and aviation specialist.

The restructuring plan, for which the government has estimated a $184 million bill it hopes foreign donors will pay, aims to reduce the armed forces to only 2,500 members. The same plan will overhaul the police and judiciary.

Adding urgency to the security reform, Guinea-Bissau is scheduled to hold a parliamentary election in November and international observers and local politicians are hoping the military will not be tempted to interfere in the vote.

Verastegui said his overtures to win the confidence of military chiefs, including the armed forces head General Batista Tagme Na Wai, had encountered some suspicion.

"They don't really understand why we're here, they think we've come to tell them what to do," he said. He said Vieira's government and military commanders must decide what kind of army they want.

• Soldiers laid off would also need livelihoods and dignity to avoid storing up future trouble.
  As it stands, the top-heavy Guinea-Bissau military would be hard pressed to protect its land frontiers or jagged coastline, which U.N. anti-narcotics experts say are being constantly penetrated by drug-traffickers' planes and boats.
• "How many vehicles do the frontier police have?
• None.
• How many aircraft does the country have for border control?
• None.
• Boats? There are one or two -- but they'd have trouble getting them onto the water," Verastegui said.

"An army which sits in the barracks thinking about things that it shouldn't, will end up doing them."

The Rest @alertnet.com