Guinea ex-president Alpha Conde travels to UAE for medical treatment: junta

Guinea's deposed former president has sought medical treatment in the United Arab Emirates having left the country earlier this week, the ruling junta said Tuesday.

Alpha Conde left the West African state on Monday, according to government officials who requested anonymity, following a military coup in September last year.

Guinea's military did not announce the 83-year-old's departure at the time.

But on Tuesday, it released a video showing Conde - closely watched by the army since they took power - dressed in a suit and travelling to an unidentified airport, where he boarded a plane.

"It is urgent for me to go for treatment, that is my concern," the ex-leader said. "I'm sure I will be well looked after."

His release was one of the demands made by the West Africa bloc ECOWAS after last year's coup, along with the holding of elections within six months.

Conde, who governed Guinea for roughly a decade, sparked mass protests in 2020 after pushing through a constitutional change allowing him to seek a third term.

He then won a violently disputed October election, which the political opposition denounced as a sham. Dozens of protesters were killed in nationwide unrest.

He was deposed last September in an army putsch, and was held incommunicado for 12 weeks before the junta allowed him to stay with his wife in the suburbs of capital Conakry.

On 31 December Conde was granted authorisation to travel abroad for a month to seek medical care.

His departure comes after Guinean legal authorities opened a January probe into alleged crimes committed under his rule.

A former opposition activist who spent decades in exile, Conde became Guinea's first democratically elected president in 2010, was re-elected in 2015, and sparked hopes of a new political dawn in the former French colony.