Guinea-Bissau President Umaro Sissoco Embalo on Thursday accused a former Guinean army chief with links to drug trafficking and two accomplices of being behind a failed coup in the West African nation on February 1.
Embalo, 49, later told reporters that he had escaped the five-hour gun battle unscathed and that 11 people had been killed in the fighting.
On Thursday, he named former Rear Admiral José Américo Bubo Na Tchuto, who was chief of the navy in the early 2000s, among the three men he said had been arrested in the attack.
He named the other two as Tchamy Yala, also a former officer, and Papis Djeme, and said all three had been arrested.
Embalo linked the attack on government buildings to transatlantic drug trafficking.
The former Portuguese colony of Guinea-Bissau is a hub for cocaine trafficking from Latin America to Africa.
“The hands that hold the weapons are people with ties to the big drug cartels,” Embalo said.
The three men appointed by the president were arrested in April 2013 aboard a ship off the coast of West Africa by undercover agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
DEA officers posing as traffickers said the men had attempted to broker a deal to import cocaine into Guinea-Bissau and then redirect it to North America and Europe.
José Américo Bubo Na Tchuto, who was described by the DEA as a drug lord, was sentenced to four years in prison in the US, while Tchamy Yala and Papis Djeme received prison sentences of five years and six years. and a half, respectively.
All three returned to Guinea-Bissau after their release.