Burkina Faso military killed over 100 civilians in Solenzo 'massacre'
The attacks, in which thousands of people have been killed and millions displaced, have continued despite promises by the country's military leaders to deal with the insurgency.Ahead of the release of the HRW findings on Monday, there were reports of more militant attacks over the weekend with dozens of military and civilian casualties. The BBC has not been able to confirm these reports and the authorities do not routinely comment on reported jihadist attacks.The BBC has approached the Burkina Faso govt for comment on the HRW report.Why Burkina Faso's junta leader has captured hearts and minds around the worldWhy West Africa has more 'terror deaths' than rest of world combinedThe rights group says it interviewed witnesses, militia members, journalists and the civil society and analysed videos shared on social media to make the findings regarding the army's involvement in the March killings.HRW previously said the army was "implicated" in the killings, based on videos that were being shared online showing dozens of dead and injured people, although the findings were not definitive.It now says further research has "uncovered that Burkina Faso's military was responsible for these mass killings of Fulani civilians". It adds that least 100 more civilians were killed last month in reprisal attacks by jihadist groups against those seen as helping the military."Mass killings of civilians by government security forces, militias, and Islamist armed groups amount to war crimes and other possible atrocity crimes," it says.The rights group has urged the government to investigate and prosecute all those responsible for the crimes. This came as junta leader Capt Ibrahim Traoré returned from Moscow after a Friday meeting with Vladimir Putin on cooperation and security in the Sahel.Since the military seized power, Burkina Faso has turned away from colonial power France and towards Russia for help in tacking the Islamist insurgency.
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The ‘quick and easy' mission that landed two British adventurers in a filthy West African jail
The mission was meant to last four days: retrieve and secure a high-altitude research balloon that had crash-landed in the bush of West Africa, on behalf of an American aerospace and defence company. For Paul Inch, a 50-year-old former lance sergeant from Blaenau Ffestiniog, north-west Wales, who had completed five tours of Northern Ireland, and Richard Perham, a 29-year-old mountaineering specialist from Bristol, who advises TV crews on how to operate in remote environments, the assignment was sold as 'quick and easy' by their employers. But nothing went according to plan. The British survival experts ended up being imprisoned in Guinea for exactly 100 days on false charges of espionage. 'Most of the time it was awful, some of the time it was horrendous,' Perham recalls, a bundle of handwritten notes by his side. On the evening of December 27, Perham and Inch – who at this point did not know each other – had received a call from Patrick van de Velde, the chief executive of Expedition Forces, a Canadian organisation that specialises in the recovery of high-altitude research and intelligence balloons from challenging locations. This was the pair's first assignment in Africa. 'We offer specialist solutions for the most difficult to navigate areas,' says a strapline on the Expedition Forces website, among photographs of smiling daredevil adventurers abseiling down trees and posing with an alligator. The two men were told that they would be retrieving a research balloon on behalf of Aerostar, an aerospace company based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Aerostar describes itself as a 'world leader in the design, manufacture, integration, and operation of stratospheric balloon platforms' and lists the US Air Force, Nasa and Google among its clients. On its website, Aerostar says its 'balloon platforms and airships offer critical advantages to a wide range of missions' covering 'communications, data relay, surveillance [and] intelligence '. The purpose of the balloon and what information, if any, it had recorded during its 11-day flight over the north Atlantic and into eastern Guinea was not shared with the two British men during the briefing. The balloon contained the same technology used for monitoring weather systems, according to Perham; it was deployed as a test run and contained no sensitive data. When approached by The Telegraph, Aerostar says only that the balloon was used to 'test new power system equipment'. The pair were given 48 hours to prepare before flying out. Inch had agreed a fee for himself of $2,000 for four days of work, the equivalent of £370 per day. (Petham does not disclose his own fee.) Rates for similar expeditions range from $750 (£550) per day for travelling to an active war zone such as eastern Ukraine, to $350 for a jaunt to western Europe. They were told that Guinea's aviation authorities had been pre-warned of the operation by Aerostar and that all necessary permissions to occupy the country's airspace were obtained. As they learnt later, under police interrogation in the West African nation, this was not the case. 'It was always sold as a quick and easy job; there and back in four days,' Inch says of discussions before his departure. 'There didn't seem to be any risk; there was literally no talk of there being any possibility that anything could go wrong. From the first phone call, I put my trust in them [Aerostar] that all of the right protocols, all of the safety things, were in place.' Perham agrees. 'We were assured that it was above board. I prepare for expedition work; I do not prepare to be locked up without answers.' The younger of the two, he had never served in the military or worked in national security. A guarded and cautious man, his voice occasionally wavers. His wife sits beside him during the interview, and he often looks over to her for reassurance. Inch, by contrast, comes across as more defeatist in tone; of the pair, he would suffer worse physically during the ordeal. Landing in uncertainty Without any formal safety briefings, risk assessments or emergency protocols in place, the men flew out to Paris separately on December 29. There, Perham and Inch met each other for the first time, and then boarded a six-hour connecting flight to Conakry, Guinea's capital, 2,896 miles away. A former French colony, Guinea has been ruled by a military junta since 2021, following a coup. The Foreign Office explicitly warns of the risk of detention that foreigners face in travelling there, stating that the country's criminal justice process 'falls below international standards' and that pre-trial detention is common, with suspects potentially spending months in prisons without a constant supply of food and water. As they flew south, the pair were unaware that Guinea's police force had already seized the balloon's payload, following two days of local news headlines and social media videos of a 'mysterious satellite' crashing in the bush. It had been discovered by a group of children in a mango plantation eight miles north of the city of Kankan, having plummeted 58,000ft to earth. That same evening, Perham and Inch landed in Guinea. Accompanied by a fixer and a translator who spoke Malinke, one of the country's three main languages, they drove to the crash site in the village of Soumankoué on New Year's Day, still unaware that the police had already picked up the balloon. Perham's French (Guinea's official language) was minimal, while Inch's was non-existent. The team's local enquiries as to where the balloon had come down triggered the arrival of a mob of villagers, armed with machetes and rifles, who swiftly surrounded them and hauled them before the community's elders. After Perham and Inch were harangued by the elders, a gendarme was called to the village to escort the team back to Kankan, Inch recalls. During the trip, the officer reassured the pair that their detention was simply a paperwork error that could be resolved with a quick 'one-on-one cash transaction'. Their money was pocketed by the gendarme and the four were handed over to another team of gendarmes and driven 11 hours to the police station in Conakry, where they underwent the first of several rounds of interrogations. It was at this point that Inch and Perham discovered they were being treated as espionage suspects and were to be detained on the grounds of national security. 'Very soon after we arrived there, it became clear that something was wrong,' Perham says. Later that evening, the pair were led to their living quarters for the next 10 days: a cockroach and rat-infested shipping container, barely wide enough for two people to stand next to one another. The bedding consisted of thin, threadbare rugs on a hard stone floor, and the tiny white fan inside the cell did little to alleviate the stifling 40C temperatures. On January 10, after a brief hearing at Conakry's criminal court, they were loaded on to a prison van with around 10 other handcuffed inmates and taken to prison, the Maison Centrale de Conakry, that same evening. 'The initial drive from the gendarmerie was the scariest thing I have ever experienced. They just put the sirens on, it was [like] something out of Wacky Races. The way they go, scary as hell, in and out of traffic, beeping their horns, it was just bad,' Inch says now. The price of survival The Maison Centrale de Conakry is a decrepit federal prison built in the 1930s by French colonists to contain approximately 300 inmates. Today it houses as many as 2,000 men, women and even children who were born and raised inside the prison's walls. For every existing bed space in the Maison Centrale, there are three other people claiming to occupy it. The deplorable conditions of the prison were laid bare in a 2023 report by the US Department of State. Malnutrition and dehydration were rife among inmates, who had to rely on bribes to staff, paid by family members or charities, for medication and food. Perham answers my questions about his detainment in a thoughtful, measured way, often taking five-second-long pauses before speaking. His replies are interspersed by the sounds of his 17-month-old daughter delightedly ripping up newspaper on the carpeted floor of the meeting room where we talk . Our two-hour-long interview in The Telegraph's office in London takes place only a week after Perham's return to Britain. The physical and mental toll of his ordeal – weight loss, tropical ulcers, a mouth infection, exhaustion and stress – are clearly visible. 'We very much had to take everything one step at a time and just concentrate on what was in front of us. My initial feeling was just an emptiness and shock that we entered as prisoners and our things were confiscated,' he says. When the van passed through the prison's large iron gates, Inch and Perham were offloaded with the other detainees to be processed. Walking towards the prison compound, the rancid smell of sewage and festering, overflowing rubbish bins assailed their nostrils. Inmates openly defecated and urinated into the drains in front of their eyes. As many of the guards were illiterate, Perham and Inch were checked in at the central office by another prisoner, who spoke minimal English. After handing over their belongings, they were left with just the shirts on their backs. Which cell Perham and Inch were to be held in was determined by how much money they could offer the guards. By this point, neither had any cash on them. 'That was rather tricky,' Perham says simply, with a slight smile. Known by inmates as 'Le Couloir', the prison's layout is a long corridor with rooms on each side. Inmates unable to pay were placed in cells with violent, predatory offenders. The pair were told that as white Westerners who were likely to be wealthier than their fellow inmates, they would be staying in a 'comfortable living area with access to a toilet and a comfortable bed'. This, like so many other assurances made to them by the officers, was not the case. Their first cell, where they spent two weeks, was crammed with 30 other prisoners sleeping on mattresses, two abreast, that covered the entire floor. 'How [so] many people fitted in that room, I do not know,' Inch says. The pair's only pitiful defence against the rats, cockroaches and mosquitoes that infested the cell was a small handheld fan they managed to obtain. At the cell door was a huge mound of flip-flops, which all the prisoners took from at random. 'I even found one of the guards with my shoes on,' Perham remembers. Each cell was ruled over by a 'chief', who determined where others were allowed to sit and what privileges they could earn. The distinction between guards and prisoners was blurred. Officers socialised in the same areas and would bully inmates for money. Anything the pair needed – food, medicine, toiletries, a phone or small luxuries, even exercise – had to be paid for with bribes to the prisoners and guards inside. Fortunately, on their first night, they were given a warm reception by 'Kati', a chief in an Arsenal football shirt, who offered them his bed. Inch and Perham spent the first night sleeping head to toe on a mattress in the corner. Perham says: 'You pull together and you work together. You work as one body because the conditions are such that you have no personal space.' Only thoughts of his wife and young daughter, and the precious weekly phone calls he could make to them back in the UK, got him through the terrible days and nights. The water from the showers, which would often run out, was so contaminated that the men would have to douse themselves in disinfectant afterwards. Their rations were a few bowls of rice each day with a thin sauce poured on top. They were only able to survive by bribing their local lawyer to bring in pizzas and burgers with money transferred from their families. Outside the cell, their skin colour made them a target for financial extortion and intimidation. On the first morning of their captivity, as they queued to shower, Inch was kicked in the stomach and attacked by another inmate. 'You would witness violence in some ways most days,' Perham says. Shortly into their detention, they were led into the central, and most violent, part of the prison, reserved for those with no money. 'This was one of the most traumatic parts of the whole story for me, going to that place and finding a way to get out of there,' Perham tells me. He was threatened with what his wife now describes as 'serious, serious abuse', and extorted for money. Through intermediaries inside the prison, the pair were able to pay the £850 needed to secure their place back in the slightly safer cell. On the outside, Perham's wife, Marianne Heikkala, a 31-year-old finance director at a health company, and Inch's partner, Cheryl Potter, a 45-year-old paramedic, mounted a campaign to secure their release through petitions to Guinea authorities and letters to the Foreign Office and John Marshall, the British ambassador to Guinea at the time. A lawyer, supplied by Aerostar to argue their case, spent months trying to convince the local authorities of the pair's innocence. Two weeks later they were transferred to the second cell, where they would spend two and half months living cheek-by-jowl with 80 other inmates, sharing one bathroom. As newcomers, Inch and Perham were made to sit in the centre of the room, this one the size of a railway carriage, beneath a plume of tobacco smoke, unable to stretch their legs. At night, they wore facemasks to try to avoid contracting tuberculosis. The deplorable conditions took their toll, with Inch suffering from malnutrition, muscle wastage and gastrointestinal upsets. The noise inside was a cacophony of shouting from the inmates, many of whom downed energy drinks to keep themselves awake at night, and dozens of chickens and ducks that freely roamed the prison before being slaughtered and served to the inmates. 'You could not hear yourself think. I would have to wear earplugs if I wanted to read,' Perham says. Perham, an ultramarathon runner and long-distance cyclist, meditated each morning and would try to maintain a strict exercise routine of press-ups and sit-ups to get himself through the day. Occasionally they received small luxuries from loved ones, including a parcel packed with books, letters and mementoes. Perham's face lights up when asked about the books his wife was able to get through to him: Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, The Lord of the Rings, The Three Musketeers… 'He said, 'Classics, please.' That was the task,' Heikkala tells me. 'It needed to be a classic and from a Nobel laureate because [that would ensure] a good shelf life.' He didn't want anything that would touch too closely on his own situation. Perham chuckles when shown the picture of him in the cell holding Stephen Fry's Odyssey, a broad smile on his face. 'It really helped, it took me out of where I was and allowed me to see what I was experiencing in a different light, which was extremely powerful.' All the while, the pair would frequently be hauled before the court for updates on their case. They quickly learnt not to put too much hope in the Guinean justice system. On February 25, day 55 of their imprisonment, they were told that the prosecutor had agreed in writing to conditional release without bail. Ten days later, the judge also granted them conditional release. Three days after that, the British ambassador arrived at the prison with the pair's local lawyer to collect them. To their families, February 28 had been communicated as the date that Inch and Perham would finally be coming home. 'They showed us our papers, we went through the whole process of signing out of the prison, giving things away and saying goodbyes,' Perham says. But as they walked through the door, they were pulled to one side by the head of the prison, who had phoned the chief prosecutor and, without any explanation, informed them that they were not being released after all. 'That was crushing,' Perham recalls. 'We had no explanation. We had already mentally prepared ourselves to be outside, and the ambassador was even waiting there to collect us, so being marched back inside was a real low point.' It was then, he says, that the pair 'had to really find what we're made of and pull on the resilience we had'. Freedom at last It was not until April 10 that, after a lengthy appeal process, the court confirmed another conditional release. The next morning, after exactly 100 days of imprisonment, Richard Perham and Paul Inch were finally freed. A picture tells a thousand words. This could not be more true for Inch and Perham's family, whose next communication from the pair was a photo of them in the back seat of a taxi heading towards the British embassy in Guinea. Grinning from ear to ear, and each sporting an impressive beard and moustache, they give a thumbs up. 'It was the first air conditioning we had had for three months,' Perham says, describing the moment they walked into the British embassy. 'It was surreal, and I struggle to remember details. It's such a blur. It was a mix of elation and realisation. We were never truly out of the lion's mouth, but the moment we were in that car [we felt] relatively safe.' The ordeal, however, was not completely over. The men were placed under house arrest in a hotel near the prison for another 40 days, before finally being given their passports and allowed to fly home to Heathrow on May 23. Back on British soil, the pair parted, Inch to recover in hospital in Nottingham, then later at home. 'It was difficult adjusting,' says Perham of coming back to the UK. 'It is the end of a chapter of my life. Right now I am just focusing on healing and being at home with my family.' Aerostar has denied responsibility for Perham and Inch's imprisonment, stressing that it had no responsibility for their travel arrangements and that it was a subcontracted effort under the direction of Fronteering Travel Services Inc, a subsidiary of Expedition Forces. A spokesman also denied that the company had failed to secure the necessary approval for occupying Guinean airspace. Van de Velde, the head of Expedition Forces, says in an email: 'We were contracted by Aerostar and sent there on their behalf just to recover the balloon, and that's where our involvement ends.' He says that he subcontracted some of the work to Inch and Perham as independent contractors, adding, 'I was not able to get the visa in time and make it in time for the recovery. That is the only reason I was not sitting next to them in prison.' During our conversation in London a week after his release, Richard Perham's anger towards Aerostar and its alleged failings in safety briefings is palpable. 'There were three things that went wrong here: there was inadequate risk briefing, no emergency protocol, and there was no monitoring system. These are three things that a company needs to do if they are sending people to an environment. This cannot happen to people. There must be measures in place that protect people from doing work like this, because this shouldn't have happened.'
