Guinea-Bissau’s military has arrested the alleged leader of a failed attack last week that the government says was an attempted counter-coup.
Captain Pansao Ntchama and at least two other suspects were detained on an island near the West African country’s capital Bissau on Saturday, officials said.
The October 21 attack on elite army barracks left at least seven people dead, including six of the attackers.
Transition authorities in the country have accused its former colonial ruler Portugal of instigating the attack in a bid to reinstate former Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior who was ousted in an April 12 coup.
On Monday, a spokesman for Guinea-Bissau’s caretaker government said Ntchama had used a vehicle belonging to a former member of Gomes Junior’s government to carry out the attack.
Ntchama was the head of a commando unit believed to have assassinated President Joao Bernardo Vieira in 2009.
He returned last week from Portugal where he had been undergoing military training since July 2009, security sources said.
The captain is also a former associate of the government overthrown in the April coup.
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