Guinea: Top Police Officer Killed in Students Protest
May 24, 2011The commander of the gendarmerie in Kerouanè, a district located about 800km outside the capital Conakry, has been killed during a protest Monday by high school students.
The top security official, whose name has not been disclosed, was reportedly killed by a stray bullet when law enforcement officers fired warning shots to disperse the protesting students.
The students were reportedly protesting the disqualification of scores of their colleagues from sitting the BEPC examination.
WADR Conakry correspondent said the gendarmerie commander had himself ordered that warning shots be fired to disperse the students, who had wanted to storm the gendarmerie local headquarters.
They had earlier seized the district’s education office and were holding hostage the director, accused of deleting the names of more than one hundred ‘unqualified’ students from the list of candidates for the exams.
The new pre-university education department three months ago launched an exercise to re-organize the educational system, leading to the discovery of hundreds of unqualified students who were taken off the lists of candidates by the disciplinary council.
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