Guinea, 1985 — dissident coup attempt
Event Summary
On 4 July 1985 a coup was attempted in Guinea against President Lansana Conte, led by his own former prime minister and rival within the ruling military council, Colonel Diarra Traore, while Conte was abroad attending a summit. Conte had taken power in a bloodless coup in April 1984, days after the death of the longtime dictator Ahmed Sekou Toure, and had initially shared power uneasily with Traore, but a bitter rivalry developed after Traore was demoted from prime minister. Seizing his chance while Conte was out of the country, Traore and his supporters seized the radio station and announced they had taken power.
But Conte hurried back, loyalist forces rallied to him, and the coup was swiftly crushed. Traore was captured and later executed. Conte exploited the failed attempt to eliminate not only Traore's faction but also numerous close associates of the late Sekou Toure, including Toure's half brother Ismael Toure, who were arrested and killed.
Conte survived and went on to rule Guinea with an iron hand until his death in 2008.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
Cross-Reference
Datasets agree. At least two of the three reference datasets we check against carry this event, and none of them disagrees about its date or its result.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
43807041985- Albrecht/Koehler/Schutz (CAM) id
CAM-438-1985-07-04
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: President Lansana Conte crushed Diarra Traore's July 1985 coup and executed him along with Sekou Toure associates.
Baseline coding: Coup attempt failed to remove the incumbent. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; not physically harmed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
CSP
Wikipedia
New York Times
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →