Topic: Moussa Dadis Camara

Captain Moussa Dadis Camara (born 1964) is an ex-officer of the Guinean army who served as the President of the Republic of Guinea’s National Council for Democracy and Development (Conseil National de la Démocratie et du Développement, CNDD), which seized power in a military coup d'état on 23 December 2008 after the death of long-time President and dictator Lansana Conté. He has been out of office since the assassination attempt on him on 3 December 2009.

Moussa Dadis Camara was born in 1964 in the remote town of Kouré, Lola Prefecture, in the Guinée Forestière region of southeastern Guinea, near the border with Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia. He is a member of the Kpelle ethnic group (known in Guinea as Guerze). Dadis’ ethnic group are primarily found in Guinée Forestière region of Guinea, near Liberia. Dadis attended primary and secondary school in Nzérékoré, about 24 miles (40 km) away from his birth-town of Kouré. He studied law and economics at Abdel Nasser University in the capital, Conakry. He is a Christian in a country that is at least 85% Muslim. Dadis speaks five languages: French, Kpelle, Susu, Maninka and German.

He joined the Army of Guinea in 1990 as a corporal and was later appointed as the Chief of Fuels at the Guinean army base in Kindia, about 60 miles northeast of Conakry. From 2001 to 2002, Dadis was sent to Sierra Leone as a member of the United Nation’s peacekeeping troops. In 2004, President Conté sent Dadis, along with several other Guinean soldiers, to Bremen, Germany, for 18 months’ military training. In November 2008, he was named head of the Guinean army’s fuel supplies unit, a branch of the Guinean Minister of Defense’s cabinet. He was one of the leading mutineers in the 2008 Guinean military unrest. Prior to the December 2008 coup, he was not well known by the general population.