BISSAU, April 27 (Reuters) – Soldiers in Guinea-Bissau have
released the country’s interim president and leading
presidential candidate after seizing them in an April 12 coup,
local media and a minister in Ivory Coast said on Friday.
Ex-premier and presidential election front-runner Carlos
Gomes Junior and interim President Raimundo Pereira were being
flown to Abidjan in Ivory Coast on Friday evening, according to
Ivorian minister for African integration Adama Bictogo.
The pair were released a day after West African regional
bloc ECOWAS announced the deployment of a force to the country
and threatened sanctions against soldiers who resisted ECOWAS
demands for the return to civilian rule.
(Reporting by Alberto Dabo in Bissau and Joe Bavier in Abidjan;
Writing by David Lewis; Editing by Andrew Roche)
