Key bloc to impose bans, freeze on assets of junta

Ghana — West African leaders have decided to impose travel bans and freeze financial assets of members of Guinea’s ruling junta and their families after a coup more than a week ago, according to the bloc known as ECOWAS.

The decisions were announced after an Extraordinary Summit on Guinea in Ghana’s capital, Accra. Mediators with the regional group had traveled to Guinea to meet with junta leaders and check on the condition of deposed President Alpha Conde.

ECOWAS president Jean Claude Brou said the West African leaders have also insisted that there should be no “need for very long transition for the country to return to democratic order.”

The targeted sanctions come after Guinea’s coup leaders set a number of conditions for releasing Conde, according to the foreign minister of Ghana.

ECOWAS had already warned it will impose penalties on the junta in Guinea unless it immediately releases Conde, who has been held at an undisclosed location since being detained during the Sept. 5 coup in Conakry.

“We are coming to address a burning issue in the region,” Ghanaian President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the current chair of the regional bloc, said ahead of the summit. He was joined by presidents or high-ranking officials from eight of the 15 other ECOWAS countries.

Members of the ECOACCRA, WAS delegation that visited Conakry after the coup presented their reports at Thursday’s meeting, said Ghanaian Foreign Minister Shirley Ayorkor Botchway.

The delegation has spoken with Conde’s doctor “who ascertained that indeed physically, he’s very well,” she said. However, she said, the ex-president is still coming to terms with the fact that his government has been toppled after more than a decade in power.

“For anybody who has gone through such a traumatic experience like he did, mentally, it’s not the best. Not to say that mentally we found anything wrong, but he was quite shocked; he’s still in a state of shock,” she added.

Guinea’s coup leaders have yet to make public their proposed timeline for handing over power to a civilian transitional government, nor have they outlined how quickly new elections can be organized.