The fate of anti-Portuguese guerrilla leader Amilcar Cabral is unknown following the reported destruction of his Conakry headquarters.

The Dakar office of his party, the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and the Cape Verde Islands (PAIGO), has said that Cabral, its President, was in the capital on Sunday (22 November) when his office was over-run by insurgents. Conakry radio has described them as "mercenaries" and "Portuguese-backed forces."
Any coup in Guinea as a result Read more

The fate of anti-Portuguese guerrilla leader Amilcar Cabral is unknown following the reported destruction of his Conakry headquarters.

The Dakar office of his party, the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and the Cape Verde Islands (PAIGO), has said that Cabral, its President, was in the capital on Sunday (22 November) when his office was over-run by insurgents. Conakry radio has described them as "mercenaries" and "Portuguese-backed forces."
Any coup in Guinea as a result of the incursions would certainly affect the future of another notable resident, the exiled former President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, who has lived in Guinea since being deposed by the Ghanian army in February 1966. He was most recently seen at President Sekou Toure's side in February 1970, at a reception in Conakry.

Guinea's President Sekou Tours was the only African leader to offer ex-President Nkrumah asylum after his overthrow, and he even went as far as to offer him the title of Guine's 'co-President'. Both men were at that time Marxists devoted to the ideal of uniting all Africa under one revolutionary Government.

Since then newspaper reports suggest that ex-President Nkrumah's standing with President Toure has declined. and there is now no mention of his being a 'co-President' or representative of Guinea at the U.N., as was once suggested.

The capture of Amilcar Cabral's Conakry headquarters leads to speculation that one aim of the operation in guinea has been to destroy guerrilla bases and arms depots operating against Portuguese Guinea.

Mr. Cabral is a Cape Verde Islander, who worked for the Portuguese administration in Guinea between 1950 and 1954. He also worked on a sugar estate in Portuguese Angola between 1954 and 1956.

In 1962 he led the PAIGC into direct military action against the Portuguese in Portuguese Guinea. There have been claims and counter-claims from Lisbon and Conakry of infiltrations, bombing and attacks from the other's territory.

In Angola and Mozambique, Portugal's other territories in Africa, there have been wars against African guerrillas for about ten years now. Cabral has played a leading part in the unifying of the effort of freedom- fighters against the Portuguese in their African territories.

At a press conference in Dakar, Senegal in May 1969, Mr. Cabral claimed sweeping victories for his resistance party operating from Guinea. He also showed the press a number of people seriously injured in what he said were napalm raids by the Portuguese on villages 'liberated' by his forces. At that time he claimed to have 'liberated' two-thirds of Portuguese Guinea. Close