Guinea-Bissau, 2012 — military coup
Event Summary
On 12 April 2012 the military seized power in Guinea-Bissau between the two rounds of a presidential election, detaining the interim president and the front running candidate and halting the vote. The election had been called after President Malam Bacai Sanha died in a Paris hospital in January 2012; National Assembly speaker Raimundo Pereira became interim president, and in the first round on 18 March former prime minister Carlos Gomes Junior led with about 49 percent, heading to an April runoff against Kumba Iala. On the evening of 12 April, mutinous soldiers under the armed forces chief of staff General Antonio Indjai attacked Gomes Junior's home and the interim president's residence, took control of central Bissau, seized the state media, and arrested both Pereira and Gomes Junior.
The junta, which formed a Military Command, said it had acted because the civilian government had struck a secret deal for Angolan troops to reform and shrink the army, threatening the interests of military leaders long tied to the country's drug trafficking economy. The takeover was condemned by the United Nations Security Council, the African Union, and ECOWAS, which imposed sanctions. Pereira and Gomes Junior were later released and flown to Ivory Coast, and a negotiated transition installed a third place candidate, Manuel Serifo Nhamadjo, as interim president.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
How It Unfolded
Hand-coded by Coup Atlas from the sources on this page, using a fixed list of tactics. Only events we have read through carry this coding, so most records do not have it yet.
- Led by
- Military
- How long it took
- Under a day — resolved within 24 hours
- Troop movements in the capital or key cities
- Detention or expulsion of the incumbent leader
- Seizure of broadcasters / coup declaration on state media
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
40404122012- Albrecht/Koehler/Schutz (CAM) id
CAM-404-2012-04-12
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: Interim President Raimundo Pereira and PM and candidate Carlos Gomes Junior, both arrested; later released and taken to Ivory Coast.
Baseline coding: Incumbent executive removed from power. Recorded leader fate: deposed; arrested or jailed; exiled. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
Powell and Thyne
Wikipedia
Wall Street Journal
Shanghai Daily
Weekend Australian
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 →