CONAKRY, Guinea — Oury Bailo Bah was on the cellphone along with his brother when he heard crackling, gunshots and screams within the background on the stadium the place protesters had gathered in 2009.

He urged El Hadj Hassane Bah to remain on the road as he tried to flee the gunfire from members of the presidential guard generally known as the crimson berets.

“He was working and rapidly, apparently, the cellphone dropped as a result of I might hear the encompassing noises, however not my brother,” Oury Bailo Bah stated Tuesday. “He didn’t reply anymore.”

Witnesses and victims’ kin, together with Oury Bailo Bah, started giving testimony Tuesday within the trial of 11 defendants charged with homicide over the Sept. 28, 2009 bloodbath that left not less than 157 protesters lifeless and dozens of ladies raped. As many as 400 persons are anticipated to testify within the coming weeks.

Amongst these charged is former coup chief Moussa “Dadis” Camara, who testified in December that he had been asleep because the bloodbath unfolded.

The demonstrators on the stadium that day had been protesting Camara’s plans to run for president. The junta stated “uncontrolled” parts of the military carried out the rapes and killings. However a Human Rights Watch investigation discovered that Camara’s high aides had been on the stadium and did nothing to cease the violence.

A number of months later Camara survived an assassination try and fled to Burkina Faso the place he lived in exile for greater than a decade earlier than returning to face trial in Guinea.

Throughout his testimony Tuesday, Oury Bailo Bah described the chaos and heartbreak that confronted victims’ households that day. After studying concerning the bloodbath on tv, he went from hospital to hospital visiting morgues in hope of discovering his brother’s physique.

“Vehicles got here, three vans filled with our bodies and wounded. I had by no means seen a lot blood from a human being. Human blood was flowing as if we had been at a butcher store,” he recalled.

It will take 5 extra days earlier than the households could be allowed to come back and gather the our bodies, he stated. Dozens of corpses, although, weren’t there.

Oury Bailo Bah says he is aware of his brother died that day — he held up an image of his physique in court docket on Tuesday that was taken within the aftermath of the violence on the stadium. However the household was by no means in a position to find his stays.

Oury Bailo Bah stated he had tried to hide that element from his mom, hoping to spare her additional grief by saying as a substitute that his physique was too decomposed to be buried.

“She stated to me: ‘Even when he’s a multitude, it’s a must to put him in a bag and ship him to me. I need to see it.’” he testified. “It was at that exact second that I used to be pressured to confess to her that the physique had not been discovered.”

“We don’t have a grave to collect at,” he stated. “What we’ve got left of him is his reminiscence. I would really like, Mr. President, to be informed the place my brother’s physique is.”