During his omnipotence, it was not difficult to find Claude Pivi in Conakry. The colossus received guests in his office as Minister of Presidential Security, where fake statues of the Virgin Mary made of stucco and real bank notes were piled up. The gate was guarded by a young albino man believed to have mystical powers. The junta to which he belonged has since been replaced by another and almost all the leading roles of the team which constituted it are in prison for the massacre committed on September 28, 2009 in the stadium of the Guinean capital.
All except one. Since November 4, 2023 and his escape from the central house in Conakry, Claude Pivi has been on the run, invisible, untraceable, feared by the power which made him the most wanted man in the country and terrifying for the survivors and the families of the victims. victims of “Black Monday”. According to the report of a United Nations commission of inquiry, at least 156 people were killed, hundreds injured and more than 109 women raped that day for wanting to challenge the fanciful Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, President of Guinea between 2008 and 2010, the right to stand in the next election.
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After the commando operation which allowed the “liberation” of the former minister, but also that of the ex-dictator and colonels Tiégboro Camara and Blaise Goumou, “Dadis” and his fellow prisoners did not delayed in being caught. They are once again in the dock in Guinea’s most closely watched trial, which opened at the end of September. But Claude Pivi, whose “belle” had been organized by one of his sons, Verny, is still running. The Minister of Justice and Human Rights, Alphonse Charles Wright, offered a reward of 500 million Guinean francs (55,000 euros) “to anyone who facilitates his arrest.” A toll-free number, 1015, was even opened by the authorities to facilitate his tracking.
According to the spokesperson for the Guinean Human Rights Organization (OGDH), Alseny Sall, Claude Pivi remains feared by Guineans but also by those in power. “He still has a lot of influence in the army,” he explains. He worries. During his hearings [at the court of first instance of Dixinn], he boasted of being the only one among the accused to have truly waged war. »
Within the National Council for Democracy and Development (CNDD), where each officer jealously kept his men close to him in order to display his power, Claude Pivi enjoyed a reputation built in the wars that shook neighboring countries. During the 1990s, he participated in military operations launched by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau but especially in Liberia, where for a time he would have ensured the security of Charles Taylor, warlord, future president, sentenced in 2012 to fifty years in prison for “crimes against humanity” by the Special Court for Sierra Leone.