Guinea, 2009 — palace coup attempt
Event Summary
On 3 December 2009 Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, the military ruler of Guinea, was shot in the head and seriously wounded by his own aide de camp, Lieutenant Aboubacar Diakite, known as Toumba, in a dramatic act coded as a palace coup. Camara had seized power in December 2008 in a coup hours after the death of the longtime dictator Lansana Conte, heading the National Council for Democracy and Development. His rule turned catastrophic: on 28 September 2009, his presidential guard, the Red Berets, massacred at least 157 opposition demonstrators in a Conakry stadium and raped scores of women, an atrocity that drew international sanctions and threatened Camara personally.
Toumba Diakite, who had commanded forces implicated in the massacre and feared being made the scapegoat, turned on Camara and shot him. Camara survived but was gravely injured and was flown to Morocco and then Burkina Faso for treatment and exile, while his deputy Sekouba Konate took over as acting leader. Camara's removal, though violent, opened the way for a transition to civilian rule and elections in 2010, and he was later convicted of crimes against humanity for the 2009 massacre.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
Cross-Reference
Only one dataset carries it. One of the three reference datasets we check against carries this event; the others do not list it. That is not a contradiction — the datasets cover different periods and use different thresholds — but it means the record has had less outside corroboration.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
43812032009
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: Captain Moussa Dadis Camara was shot in the head by his aide Toumba in December 2009, survived, and went into exile.
Baseline coding: Coup attempt failed to remove the incumbent. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; injured. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
The Times
The Independent
Cape Times
The Christian Science Monitor
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 →