CONAKRY, Guinea — Sixteen military personnel and police officers from Sierra Leone have been freed by Guinea following their detention earlier this week amid tensions along the disputed border between the two West African nations, according to Sierra Leonean officials.
Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Information announced on Facebook that “All security officers arrested by the Guinean authorities have been safely handed over to Sierra Leone.”
The personnel were released after Foreign Minister Alhaji Timothy Kabba led a diplomatic mission to Conakry, Guinea’s capital, the ministry reported.
According to Sierra Leone’s government, multiple security personnel, including a commanding officer, were detained and taken across the border by Guinea’s armed forces on Tuesday.
Guinea’s military defended the arrests in their own statement, claiming the Sierra Leonean team had crossed into Guinea without proper authorization and “set up a tent and raised their national flag” approximately one mile inside Guinea’s territorial boundaries.
The two neighboring nations have maintained an ongoing territorial disagreement for over twenty years, dating back to Sierra Leone’s brutal civil conflict from 1991 to 2002. During that war, Sierra Leone requested Guinea’s military assistance to protect its eastern frontier, but Guinea’s forces never completely departed after the conflict ended.
Monday’s confrontation took place in Kalieyereh, located in Sierra Leone’s Falaba District, where Sierra Leone says its military and police personnel were “making bricks for the construction of a border post and accommodation facility.”
This marks another chapter in the continuing border tensions, following last year’s incident when Guinea’s military moved into a mineral-rich border community in Sierra Leone, raising alarm throughout the region.
