(Previous GENEVA, adds details, quotes, background)
By Alberto Dabo
BISSAU, April 19 (Reuters) – The International Committee of
the Red Cross said on Thursday it has brought medical supplies
to Guinea-Bissau’s diabetic former Prime Minister Carlos Gomes
Junior twice since he was detained in last week’s military coup.
Gomes Junior had been widely expected to win a presidential
election run-off in the tiny West African state until it was
preempted by the April 12 coup. He is being held alongside
Interim President Raimundo Pereira by the ruling junta.
“We most recently visited them on April 18 and brought
medical supplies, water, and hygienic supplies,” spokesman Denes
Benczedi said by telephone from Dakar. “We are following Gomes
Junior’s medical condition closely,” he said.
He said the ICRC had earlier brought diabetes medicine to
Gomes Junior during a visit on April 14, two days after soldiers
attacked his residence with heavy weapons and detained him.
World powers have condemned Guinea Bissau’s self-styled
“Military Command” for derailing the election and have urged a
swift return to democratic rule – a process the junta said on
Wednesday would take two years.
The former Portuguese colony has seen several coups and army
revolts since independence in 1974 and the latest was a blow to
efforts by Western donors to reduce the military’s meddling in
the country’s politics and counter drug-trafficking cartels
using Guinea-Bissau as a smuggling hub.
Gomes Junior was unpopular with military chiefs because he
supported plans to reform the bloated army, which is accused by
Western security agencies of involvement in smuggling South
American narcotics to users in Europe.
The Military Command said on Wednesday that it would soon
create a civilian-led caretaker government to guide a two-year
transition back to democratic rule, culminating in presidential
and legislative elections some time in 2014.
The move was unlikely to satisfy foreign partners, and
lacked the backing of the country’s main political party, PAIGC,
which had put Gomes Junior forward as presidential candidate.
The African Union suspended Guinea-Bissau in the wake of the
coup and West African bloc ECOWAS has condemned the ouster.
Guinea-Bissau’s upended presidential election was meant o
replace former leader Malam Bacai Sanha, who died in a Paris
hospital in January after a long illness.
Human rights group Amnesty International said earlier this
week that Gomes Junior and Pereira were being held at Mansoa
Barracks, 60 km (37 miles) northeast of Bissau in a
“mosquito-infested small cell with no water or toilet
facilities.”
(Reporting by Tom Miles in Geneva and Richard Valdmanis in
Dakar; Writing by Richard Valdmanis Editing by Maria Golovnina)
