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Guinea prosecutor demands death penalty over Ebola murders

By AFP
Guinea Medical staff clean their protection suits as part of the fight against the Ebola virus on March 8, 2015 at the Donka hospital in Conakry, Guinea.  By Cellou Binani AFPFile
APR 20, 2015 LISTEN
Medical staff clean their protection suits as part of the fight against the Ebola virus on March 8, 2015 at the Donka hospital in Conakry, Guinea. By Cellou Binani (AFP/File)

Conakry (AFP) - A prosecutor called Monday for the death penalty for 15 people accused of the murders of a nine-member Ebola education team in southern Guinea, judicial sources said.

The victims, including local health officials and journalists, went missing after their delegation came under attack from angry locals during an outreach visit to the southern town of Womey in September last year.

Eight bodies were recovered from the septic tank of a nearby primary school two days after the attack.

Williams Fernandez, prosecuting at the trial in the southern city of N'Zerekore, said 26 defendants had been accused of a raft of offences including murder, criminal conspiracy, robbery, assault and theft.

He called for 15 accused to be sentenced to death and for the remaining 11 to be acquitted.

Michel Labile Sonomou, who is defending one of the accused, told AFP the five-week trial was due to sum up at the end of the week. Closing arguments for the defence begin on Tuesday.

The deadliest Ebola epidemic on record has killed nearly 11,000 people in west Africa, according to the World Health Organization.

The virus emerged in Guinea in December 2013 and quickly spread, accompanied by fear and paranoia among villagers who felt the government and the international community could not be trusted.

Many Guineans believed local and foreign healthcare workers were part of a conspiracy to deliberately introduce the outbreak, or invented it as a means of luring Africans to clinics to harvest their blood and organs.

A police lieutenant told AFP the Womey outreach team was targeted by protesters who had come "to kill them because they think Ebola is nothing more than an invention of white people to kill black people".

At least 21 people were wounded during violent scenes in which the team was pelted with stones, according to local police.

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