Guinea's justice minister has said the country's most wanted fugitive, Colonel Claude Pivi, has been extradited from Liberia, as Pivi's lawyer said Thursday he was unreachable in Conakry.
A Guinean court sentenced Pivi to life imprisonment in August on charges of crimes against humanity for his involvement in a 2009 massacre.
He had been on the run since a high-profile prison escape in November.
"On Tuesday September 17, 2024, the joint efforts of the defence and security forces led to the arrest of the fugitive," Guinea's Justice Minister Yaya Kairaba Kaba said in a statement seen by AFP Thursday.
"He was taken back to the central prison to serve his sentence in accordance with the law."
But Pivi's lawyer said his client was nowhere to be found in Conakry.
"I sent someone to Conakry central prison, but he's not there," Abdourahmane Dabo told AFP.
"I've sent people to the airport, but I'm told they haven't seen him there.
"At 06:00 am (GMT) this morning a source following the case confirmed to me that he is still in Monrovia."
Dabo told AFP on Wednesday that his client had been arrested in Liberia, without giving further details.
Pivi, a former minister of presidential security, had been on the run for 10 months after being broken out of Conakry's central prison.
The authorities had offered a sizeable reward for his capture.
His arrest on Tuesday was greeted with relief by victims of the massacre, which took place on September 28, 2009.
At least 156 people were killed by gunfire, knives, machetes, or bayonets in the massacre at the Conakry stadium, in a crackdown on an opposition rally, according to a UN-mandated international commission of inquiry. Hundreds more were wounded.
At least 109 women were raped, and abuses carried on for days afterwards against more women who were kidnapped.
Detainees were tortured in what is considered one of the darkest pages in the West African nation's history.