Lagos — THE official line coming from inside Guinea-Conakry, the Burkina Faso government and the ECOWAS headquarters in Abuja, Nigeria, is that Captain Moussa Dadis Kamara is in Ouagadougou, the Burkinabe capital, recuperating from serious head injuries he received on December 3 in an assassination attempt by the head of the presidential Guard, Lieutenant Abubakar "Toumbba" Diakite.

In Morocco and Senegal, a deafening silence pervades over the issue. Morocco is where the former head of Guinea's military junta, the man many Guineans love to call "Dadis", was receiving treatment, until mid-January, when he was suddenly flown to Ouagadougou, under circumstances that have yet to be fully explained.

The Senegalese are the most ardent supporters of the December 2008, military take-over that brought Captain Kamara to power, only days after it was announced that Guinea's ruler of twenty-four years, General Lansana Conte, had died of his terminal illness. On top of that, President Abdoulaye Wade's government in Dakar was the first to rush in a medical team to Conakry in the early hours of last December 4 to prepare Captain Kamara for his onward journey to a military hospital in Morocco.

Despite statements to the contrary that have been emerging from Conakry, Ouagadougou and Abuja since the middle of January, there were indeed reliable reports that the injured junta leader was flown to Ouagadougou against his will; that he only realized he was in Burkina Faso, and not his expected destination, Guinea, when officials of President Blaise Campaore's government boarded his aircraft at Ouagadougou airport and began persuading him to alight. The junta boss had gone wild with fury, according to one report, and had only agreed to disembark, when it dawned on him that he had played into the hands of the Blaise Campaore, who, since last year, has been acting as chief mediator in bruising political talks between the military government and Guinea's political and civil society opposition groupings.

It is now clear that Mr. Campaore and his colleagues in ECOWAS had concluded that Dadis was a part of the problem; in other words, that removing him from the political equation would make for a smoother, more peaceful and freer transition to democratic civilian rule.

By the time the weak and broken Captain Kamara appeared at a conference room in Ouagadougou, nearly three weeks ago, to read out a four-page, twenty-minute speech in front of his colleagues in the former ruling C.N.D.D. junta, it has become clear to everyone that President Campaore's arm-twisting tactics had worked.

In that speech, during which Dadis's number-two and interim Head of State, General Sekouba Konate, stood to his right, the former junta leader admonished his supporters back home in Guinea not to allow themselves to be used by trouble-makers to cause unrest. He was in Burkina Faso, he claimed, by his free will. And that he was conscious and sane enough to realize that Guinea would make surer and better progress without him. He was going to a third country or remaining in Burkina Faso to continue his convalescence.

The most important part of Captain Kamara's speech was where he claimed he had been a willing partaker and signatory to a deal reached with Guinea's political opposition, under which his "friend and brother and comrade"' General Konate, will be heading a government of national unity, with a civilian prime minister and cabinet positions to be shared between the military and the opposition. That power-sharing government is on the verge of taking off. Its main task is to prepare the country for national elections scheduled to hold in June, this year.

How has the new status quo been panning out inside Guinea, especially now that it has become obvious that Captain Kamara will no longer have anything to do with the process? This is a multi-million-Dollar question, and one that has become pertinent since before the Dadis Ouagadougou declaration when his supporters barricaded themselves inside Conakry International Airport, demanding that their leader be allowed to return to his country.

Well, indications are that the general population is receptive to the power-sharing arrangement. However, inside Guinea's divided military, the situation is different. Obviously, many of Dadis supporters, especially soldiers who hail from the ex-junta leader's Forest Region, are unhappy, and they are showing it, even openly.

Just last week, a prominent member of the C.N.D.D. and a well-known Dadis loyalist Moussa Keita, was arrested by the government for "subverting the transition process" he was freed some seventy-two hours afterwards, when his allies raised eyebrows.

Time and again, reports of heightening tension, some unrest and even some minor shoot-outs have come out of Guinea's military barracks. The new interim government, led by General Konate, has also not been sitting idly by. Indications are that it has in recent weeks started working behind-the-scenes to pacify, those in the military who fear that Captain Kamara may be about to be handed over to the I.C.C., the International Criminal Court, at The Hague, Netherlands, whose prosecutors want the former junta boss to be put on trial, along with others, in connection with the September 28 massacre in Conakry.

In fact, given the high political and security stakes involved, it should not have come as a major surprise to anyone that Guinea's internal inquiry into the cold-blooded murder of those opposition demonstrators inside the re-named September 28 Stadium in Conakry said on Tuesday, February 2, that the country's military leader could not be held liable. Speaking in Conakry on the day, the chairman of the national inquiry, Sermon Kuyatte, implicated Abubakar Sidiki "Toumba" Diakite, formerly of the Presidential Guard, and the team of the Red Beret Guard. According to Mr. Kuyatte, they, and not Captain Kamara,are the ones guilty of homicide, sexual assault and illegal arrest.

"These people," he said, "must be brought to justice for their crimes."

It is no longer news that Lieutenant Diakite, who was also Dadis aide-camp, shot his former boss almost at point-blank range, because, according to "Toumba", Captain Kamara was trying to blame him for the September 28 violence, which claimed the lives of 157 protesters and the rape of dozens of women and girls. Some 50,000 opposition supporters had crammed into the sports stadium in solidarity with their leaders who were demanding that Captain Kamara not run in presidential polls originally scheduled for this January.

The major headache for Captain Kamara is that a United Nations inquiry into the killings found sufficient grounds for presuming direct criminal responsibility by both the recuperating junta boss and his former right and man, Lieutenant Diakite, as well as other members of the ruling military council.

Not once, not twice, but, severally, Captain Kamara has vehemently denied responsibility for the violence, because he was not at the stadium. Instead, Dadis blames his political opponents and what he's called "uncontrollable elements of the military".

According to the National Commission of Inquiry, Kamara is right, insisting that the September 28 demonstration was banned and opposition leaders broke the law in going ahead with the protest against the captain's expected presidential candidacy. Kuyatte, the Commission's chairman, said the Guinean government has the right to prohibit meetings that threaten public order. Defending the ailing junta leader, he said opposition leaders arrested, September 28, were only released on his orders. While the I.C.C. has launched a preliminary inquiry, basically, to determine whether that day's show of force amounted to crimes against humanity, the Chairman of Guinea's National Commission of Inquiry has been recommending a general amnesty for "people who destroyed public property". But, not the same penalty for, as Kuyatte put it, "all those responsible for murder, rape, arson and the theft of weapons". His recommendation is that they be brought to justice in court, but, under Guinean jurisdiction, rather than under the jurisdiction of The Hague-based I.C.C. It would seem that President Campaore, so desperate to make a success of his mediation efforts, arm-twisted Captain Kamara into accepting to remove himself from the Guinea political process, in return for not surrendering him to the I.C.C.