Guinean Gendarmerie

Created November 15, 1958, the Guinean Gendarmerie is the heir of "maréchaussées and gendarmerie of France." It is responsible for ensuring public safety, to ensure the enforcement and implementation of laws to protect the institutions, people and property.

The Gendarmerie, with an estimated strength of approximately 900 as of 1975, was charged with the enforcement of law and with the maintenance of public safety and security in the rural areas where more than 80 percent of the population lives. It is a paramilitary force. The main force of the Gendarmerie was organized into so-called brigades, at least one of which is assigned to each administrative region. A brigade was composed of six to thirty-six gendarmes, depending upon the importance of its responsibilities. It is ordinarily commanded by a lieutenant who is appointed to his post by presidential decree. In some instances, however, decrees have designated a senior noncommissioned officer for this post.

Besides the regular brigades assigned to administrative regions, some additional units — designated as frontier gendarmerie brigades — were distributed among the administrative regions on the country’s borders. The primary mission of the frontier brigades is to assist the Customs Service in its efforts to prevent smuggling and illegal border crossing, issues of key significance in the government’s view. The Customs Service itself was a separate organization under the Ministry of Finance. Although the frontier gendarmerie cooperates with the Customs Service, the latter agency apparently has some law enforcement units of its own that work in close cooperation with customs officials. According to the government radio in April 1974, the tenth National Congress of the PDG had requested a reorganization of the Customs Service and improvements in its operating techniques.

Conakry had at least three Gendarmerie brigades — the port, the airport, and the city brigades. Another kind of Gendarmerie unit was the mobile detachment (peloton mobile). The detachments apparently operate under the direct control of the Gendarmerie commander and assist him in supervising and coordinating the activities of the various Gendarmerie units throughout the country. There are also two so-called criminal brigades, one for the Fouta Djallon area and one for Conakry. Members of the criminal brigades made investigations of important cases but regular Gendarmerie brigade members are frequently designated to act as special investigators. These personnel are authorized to take depositions, collect fines, and make special reports in connection with specific infractions.

The system of ranks and grades in the Gendarmerie corresponded to that of the army. Lower ranks include senior sergeant major adjudant-chef) , sergeant major (adjvdant), sergeant (marechal des logis chef), corporal ( gendarme troisieme classe), private first class (gendarme deuxieme classe) and private (gendarme).

Operationally, this institution is under the direct authority of the Chief of General Staff of the Armed and is led by a colonel. Its organization is based on an adaptation of structures at various military levels, judicial and administrative.

Guinean gendarmerie includes a headquarters and two subdivisions of weapons

• provincial gendarmerie established in territorial brigades in the country under the tutelage of four regional commanders and in the capital, Conakry, as that of a commander group;
• the mobile gendarmerie composed of three operational squadrons stationed in Conakry but relevant across the country.

Guinea police is an essential tool for the security and stability of the countries that participated, along with other armies in major operations of peacekeeping on the continent: Zaire, Guinea-Bissau, Benin, Burundi, Rwanda , Liberia, Sierra Leone. The Gendarmerie is part of the armed forces and the general provisions of military laws and regulations applicable to it. Its structures, its missions and principles of action are identical to those of the French gendarmerie.

This institution is under the direct authority of the Minister of Defence and is therefore subject to the Chief of General Staff of the Armed. Guinean police is controlled from June 26, 1999 by Colonel Jacques Toure, Chief of Staff. It is composed of about 2,500 soldiers, including three hundred women.

Police captain Moussa Tiégboro Camara had been in charge since January 2009 of the fight against drug trafficking and serious offenses. Its official title is Minister of the Presidency in charge of the fight against drugs and banditry. The Tiégboro captain became notorious in June 2009 when he called on young people to organize themselves into militias and to bring justice. The gendarmes personally commanded by Tiégboro used lethal force against opposition militants. On 28 September 2009 Tiégboro and the gendarmes of his unit entered the stadium with members of the Presidential Guard. The gendarmes of his unit took an active part in the massacre and, to a lesser extent, in the sexual abuse that followed.

The Mobile Security and Response Company (Compagnie mobile d'intervention et de sécurité - CMIS) is a police unit with between 300 and 400 individuals specially trained for crowd dispersal and equipped with anti-riot equipment, including armored vehicles and tear gas. CMIS is controlled by Ansoumane Camara 254 . The CMIS police officers played a minor role in preventing opposition supporters from reaching the stage of 28 September. The CMIS armored vehicles launched the assault by firing tear gas grenades from their specially equipped vehicles into the stadium and apparently participated in the attack on the stadium, although only a few witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch accused them.

The officer staff is characterized by a large and a high average age (48 years or for masters). For a minority, it is made in France or in national schools for African regional focus. Regarding the initial training of young officers from the direct recruitment or semi-direct, it is performed, like other armies, during a school three years in joint military school in Conakry. Application training the gendarmerie takes place ENVR.

Training of staff sergeant, meanwhile, assured in a school based in the outskirts of Conakry, to Sonfonia, where they are able to receive a quality education (training, retraining and development). Students must complete an initial training course ten months allowing future gendarmes to acquire military and professional sound knowledge. The instructors, most of whom took a teaching internship in France, are able to provide quality instruction through the means put in place by France. Inaugurated in 1997, the National School of Gendarmerie Sonfonia received its first students in September 1998. Further training for survey managers and technicians criminal identification took place from 21 April 2003 to 21 August 2003 in favor 41 trainees.

The police cooperation consists of a senior officer, the chief of BULAN squadrons, technical advisor to the Chief of Staff of the Guinean police and the Director of the National Sonfonia school, Loholamou captain. It works closely with the operations commander of the 3rd instruction Bureau, the squadron commander Abdoulaye Diallo. Moreover, since the establishment of a unique network of internal security abroad, he collaborre very closely with the Internal Security Attaché based in the Delegation of International Technical Cooperation Department of the Police in Guinea Conakry. It is worth noting that the SCTIP staff is present since 1996.

The project aims, on the basis of partnership, to support the work of the national school Sonfonia gendarmerie, to assist in the selection and preparation of candidates sent in batch and continuous training in police schools or in French business units, as well as national schools with a regional focus on Africa. Participation in focus groups on projects to drive instruction and to lead in the school is always efficient, as well as on police-gendarmerie joint training always taught in collaboration with agents SCTIP.

A computer room was set up at the National School Sonfonia gendarmerie in the second half of 2004. It is actually operational since November 2004. On the site of the Sonfonia police academy, training on the legal concepts policing was provided for the new class of students inspectors during the last quarter of 2004. in December, the national gendarmerie school Sonfonia hosted, in turn, the first seminar of the area commanders and Grouping of provincial gendarmerie, developed and piloted with the support and involvement of the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Institution and the school principal.

Short-term plans include the enhancement of participation in the training of inspectors students will continue with the start of a new module on ethics and ethics. Furthermore, a new seminar for commanders of provincial gendarmerie squadron will be very quickly mounted. Finally, at the request of the Minister of Security, Region placements will be made for the benefit of the gendarmes and police units chiefs towns of administrative center in Labé, Kindia and N'Zérékoré.

The longer-term outlook is creating a course for obtaining the status of judicial police officer, inducing the formation, for six months, sixty gendarmes from all territorial units of the provincial gendarmerie, that of a refresher course in command dedicated to junior officers. The incorporation to Sonfonia and training of five hundred police cadets over a twelve month period, considered an operational imperative for the General Staff of the Guinean gendarmerie, remain subject to a political decision.