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Amilcar Cabral 1973, murder in Conakry [2/3]: the ramifications of a conspiracy

Amilcar Cabral, the founder of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), October 22, 1971. Amilcar Cabral was assassinated on January 20, 1973. LEHTIKUVA / AFP

Text by: Miguel Martins |

Laurent Correau Follow

11 mins

50 years ago, the Bissau-Guinean and Cape Verdean separatist leader Amilcar Cabral was assassinated in Conakry, then the rear base of his movement, the PAIGC.

Immediately, the Guinean power points the finger at " 

imperialism

 "

who

“ 

has just committed one of the most heinous, despicable crimes on the free soil of the Republic of Guinea

 ”

.

But what do we know, fifty years later, of the sponsors of this operation?

This is what we see in the second episode of this series.

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Death, conspiracy, betrayal.

During the 1960s and 1970s, progressive or revolutionary African leaders lived by constantly staring, in the depths of the mirror, at the ghosts of their own insecurity.

Lumumba, Um Nyobé, Moumié were assassinated.

Nkrumah was overthrown.

Mozambican Eduardo Mondlane died after a parcel bomb exploded.

On May 13, 1972, while Conakry paid homage to Kwame Nkrumah - the father of Ghanaian independence who had just died in a hospital in Bucharest -, Amilcar Cabral spoke: " 

Let no one come and affirm us

, he in French

, that Nkrumah died of throat cancer or some other disease.

No, Nkrumah was killed by the cancer of treason which we must eradicate, whose roots we must eradicate in Africa if we really want to definitively liquidate imperialist domination on this continent.

 »

The cancer of betrayal has been eating away at the PAIGC, the Bissau-Guinean independence movement, for some time now.

From the mid-1960s,

" writes one of Amilcar Cabral's biographers, Antonio Tomas, "

elements within the party began to see Cabral as a problem, as evidenced by the large number of plots against him.

 » [1] In 1967, explains this author, a trial sentenced to death the militants Honório Sanches Vaz and Miguel Embaná, accused of having tried to kill Cabral.

In 1969, an activist nicknamed

"

 Jonjon 

"

was arrested in the secretariat as he was about to use a grenade

against the independence leader

.

A year later, an operation named “Amilcar Cabral” was considered by the secret police of the Estado Novo, the regime of the Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar [the PIDE, Polícia internacional e de defesa do estado] based on a Cape Verdean called "Lachol", residing in Dakar.

“ 

These plans were mostly marked by amateurism

, writes Tomas,

and did not worry Cabral

 ”.

►Also listen: The March of the World - The voice of Amilcar Cabral

The threat is there, however.

In March 1972, Amilcar Cabral drew up a memorandum in which he explained that the Portuguese had succeeded in infiltrating the PAIGC in order to eliminate its main leaders.

He even details the steps that this plan must follow: the first infiltration of African agents from Bissau who will say they want to join the fight.

Some of them will have been recently released from prison where they will have been trained by the PIDE in techniques to destabilize the organization.

After establishing themselves in the movement, they will work to divide it, create a parallel leadership which will try to impose itself.

They will seek to undermine Cabral's authority to allow his departure or his physical elimination.

Fifty years later, the archives of the PIDE and its successor, the Direção geral de segurança (DGS, or General Directorate of Security - editor's note) confirm that the PAIGC was indeed at the time infiltrated by agents linked to Lisbon .

Investigative journalist José Pédro Castanheira cites reports sent by three of these agents to the Portuguese services and illustrates the closeness of one of them to Cabral [2].

Bruno Crimi's documentary investigation

Can we, for all that, say that the Portuguese services organized the events of January 1973?

Two years after the assassination, the journalist Bruno Crimi signed, in the columns of

Jeune Afrique,

one of the best informed articles (at this time still) on the affair.

Bruno Crimi says that he was able to access, after the Carnation Revolution of April 1974, “ 

certain documents jealously guarded in the archives of the PIDE-DGS, rue Antonio Maria Cardoso, in the capital

 ”.

It describes very precisely, citing names and dates, the role played by the Portuguese political police in Cabral's death.

His account, which RFI could not confirm with the help of new sources, is so precise that it deserves to be summarized.

According to Crimi, Cabral's fate was sealed in early 1972. Portuguese Prime Minister Marcelo Caetano needed a boost to counterbalance the victories of the separatists in the Portuguese colonies in Africa.

He calls for services.

A man, explains Bruno Crimi, is placed at the heart of the affair: Barbieri Cardoso, who after having been vice-director of the PIDE became in the mid-1960s the head of intelligence for the " 

overseas territories

 ".

It was he who had already organized the kidnapping and then the assassination of General Humberto Delgado, an opponent of the Salazar regime.

The Cabral case was entrusted to him.

He is working on the file with a close collaborator, Ernesto Lopes Ramos.

It's about successfully removing Amilcar Cabral and Aristides Pereira.

It will be necessary to exploit the cleavage that exists within the PAIGC between Cape Verdeans and Guineans from the continent. 

“ 

Barberi Cardoso

, writes Crimi,

goes to Bissau several times.

He confers with Spinola

[general Antonio de Spinola, military governor of Guinea Bissau - editor's note]

who, although aware of the affair, does not want to be directly responsible for it.

The governor entrusted the operation to one of his trusted men, Commander Mario Firmino Miguel, responsible at the time for the COE

(Centro de operações especiais)

(…)

In the months preceding the assassination, Commander Firmino Miguel made available to the political police several men – Africans – whose aim is to infiltrate the ranks of the PAIGC.

 In Conakry, the commander's right-hand man is called… Inocencio Kani.

The details of the operation, continues Crimi, are fixed at the end of 1972. “ 

The stars of the PAIGC will leave Conakry, taking Cabral and Pereira tied up to hand them over to the Portuguese

 ”.

A Portuguese naval unit will cover their retreat.

A first date is set for January 15.

Then the operation was postponed until the 20th. “ 

Late

in the afternoon of the 20th, in the port of Bissau, a Portuguese ship weighed anchor.

It is commanded by an officer, Marcelino d'Amata

[probably Marcelino da Mata - ndlr]

, who keeps radio contact with Inocencio Kani, in Ratoma.

 »

As we now know, Cabral is assassinated, only Pereira is on board the two PAIGC patrol boats leaving the port of Conakry.

“ 

Inocencio Kani, who took command, asked Marcelino d'Amata for instructions by radio, who was in contact with Bissau.

Also by radio, orders were sent from Bissau to the Portuguese cover ship and to the two patrol boats of the PAIGC, which themselves communicated them to the men remaining in Ratoma.

 Bruno Crimi describes so many interactions between the colonial power in Bissau and the conspirators that his version leaves little ambiguity about who the main architects of the operation are.

For 50 years, however, specialists have debated the role of the PIDE-DGS in this assassination.

There are those, like researcher Patrick Chabal, who validate this narrative.

The assassination of Cabral

, he considers in his work on the revolutionary leader[3],

is the result of an operation initiated by the secret police, the PIDE-DGS, in 1971-1972, like Bruno Crimi, an investigative journalist showed it in his 1975 article.

 ” Others, like Antonio Tomas, support the thesis of tensions within the PAIGC itself which would have degenerated and minimize the links between the conspirators and the Portuguese political police: “ 

More than the PIDE

,” he writes, “

what eventually connected the plotters was the fact that they had problems with the party.

Cabral was right to believe that betrayal was always motivated by the accumulation of errors.

 »[4]

Bissau-Guinean historian Julião Soares Sousa calls for broader connections to be considered.

He believes that in the 1960s and 1970s there was fertile ground for an international conspiracy.

The interests of several secret services from different countries have been able to converge around common objectives, such as the annihilation of Cabral or the overthrow of the Conakry regime.

According to him " 

it would be a methodological error to dissociate January 20, 1973

[the murder of Cabral]

from the old plan to overthrow Sékou Touré [5]

 "

.

These two distinct targets mobilized " 

certain countries (Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia, Federal Republic of Germany, South Africa, Portugal and France at the top) and secret organizations such as the French SDECE, the "

Dragon marin" [ Portuguese spy service - editor's note],

the PIDE/DGS

and Aginter Press

[a press agency subcontracting intelligence, military training and mercenary operations worldwide for right-wing authoritarian regimes - editor's note]

also installed in Portugal since the middle of the 1960s

 ”.

In addition to that, he explains, we were also in the presence of “ 

several groups of exiles from the opposition to the Sékou Touré regime, notably in Paris, Lisbon, Bissau, Dakar, Abidjan and Geneva

”.

This network would not be complete without “ 

the movements or groups of opponents to the PAIGC and the leadership of Amílcar Cabral (the PAIG, founded in Conakry in 1972 and the FULGB which emerged in November 1972)

 ”.

Guinean involvement?

In this search for responsibilities, it is also necessary to integrate those who encouraged, supported or simply allowed the elimination project to take place.

Different specialists wonder about the game of the master of Conakry and certain Guinean executives.

Was Cabral's rising star beginning to bother Sékou?

Was his ascent likely to thwart the Greater Guinea project to which the Guinean president was attached?

Disturbing testimonies have been collected by investigative journalist José Pédro Castanheira, author of a long and very methodical investigation into " 

Who killed Amilcar Cabral

 ".

Alcides Evora "Batcha", a member of the PAIGC who acts as an interpreter when the conspirators are interrogated, recalls this scene 

: aware of the plot.

The superintendent who was directing the work tried to deceive him "

Ah! You are telling lies, we are going to the cabin

[the name given to the torture room under the Sékou Touré regime - editor's note]

to refresh your memory

".

 On the way back, the version changed.

Amilcar Cabral's half-brother, Luis, remembers for his part the confession of one of the conspirators, Aristides Barbosa:

"

He spoke of elements of the administration of the Republic of Guinea who had been present at several conspiratorial meetings in Conakry.

 “Questioned by RFI, Ana Maria Cabral, the widow of Amilcar, reiterated her conviction that Ahmed Sékou Touré played no role in the death of her husband:

Sékou Touré, I do not believe it.

But it is quite possible that there were some officials from Guinea-Conakry behind them.

 »

Whatever the role played by Sékou or his entourage in the plot, the first Guinean official intends to influence the organization of the PAIGC struggle after Cabral's death.

The tone is set from his first speeches after the assassination.

A secret study of the army in Portuguese Guinea, quoted by Castanheira, also points out in October 1973 “ 

the decisive influence of the Guinean leader on the internal policy of this party after the death of Amilcar Cabral

 ”.

Did the scenario which took place on the evening of January 20, 1973 and which led to the death of Cabral superimpose several ambitions, several projects?

José Pédro Castanheira decides in any case to leave several options open and considers their connection: fight between Cape Verdeans and Guineans within the PAIGC, projects of the PIDE, but also of the Portuguese soldiers, troubled game of the entourage of Sékou Touré.

“ 

On the night of January 20, 1973,

several

of these four '

wills

' converged.

This is most likely.

Consciously or not, they will have taken advantage of each other, weaving tacit complicity and bastard alliances to achieve the same goal: to remove the common enemy from the scene 

”.

►To read: 

Amilcar Cabral 1973, murder in Conakry [1/3]: the mourning of two Guineas

►To listen: 

Report Africa - Cape Verde: what remains of the legacy of Amílcar Cabral, hero of independence?

[1] TOMAS Antonio, Amilcar Cabral.

The life of a reluctant nationalist, London, Hurst Publishers, 2021, p.

257

Translated by us

[2] CASTANHEIRA José Pédro, Who had Amilcar Cabral killed?, Paris, L'Harmattan, 2003, Pp 109-118

[3] CHABAL Patrick, Amilcar Cabral.

Revolutionary Leadership and People's war, Africa World Press, 2003, p.

133

[4] TOMAS Antonio, Amilcar Cabral.

The life of a reluctant nationalist,

op.

cit.

Pp.261-262

[5] SOARES SOUSA Julião, Amílcar Cabral (1924-1973) – Vida e morte de um revolucionário africano, Coimbra, edição de author, 2016, p 556

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