The trial over a 2009 massacre in Guinea resumed on Monday, nine days after a jailbreak saw armed commandos pluck ex-president Moussa Dadis Camara and three others from prison and left nine dead.
Three of the accused, including Dadis Camara, were recaptured the same day. Colonel Claude Pivi remains at large.
They are accused over a massacre committed at a political rally in 2009 under Dadis Camara's presidency, one of the darkest pages in the West African nation's history.
The prison raid on November 4 raised fears that the trial – which opened in 2022 after more than a decade-long wait for victims – would be interrupted.
Camara's lawyers
But, on Monday it resumed after a three-week suspension for other reasons. Dadis Camara and the two other men were present in court.
None of Dadis Camara's lawyers have been authorised to contact him since the jailbreak, one of them, Pepe Antoine Lamah, said.
He said that constituted a "violation of the rights of the defence". Pivi's lawyer, Fode Kaba Cherif, requested that the trial be postponed in his client's absence.
Prosecutor Alghassimou Diallo opposed the request. The hearing was adjourned until Monday afternoon.
'Abducted'
Lawyers for the defendants taken from prison all said their clients had left by force and had not escaped of their own volition.
Dadis Camara and ten other former officials are on trial for a litany of murders, acts of torture, rapes and kidnappings committed by security forces on September 28, 2009 and in the following days.
The massacre began in a stadium in the suburbs of the capital, Conakry, where tens of thousands of opposition supporters had gathered for a rally.
At least 156 people were killed and hundreds injured, and at least 109 women were raped, according to a UN-mandated commission of inquiry.
Security officers sacked
After the November 4 commando operation, Guinea's ruling junta purged the security and prison services, dismissing some 60 officers, soldiers and agents.
An official at the justice ministry told AFP on condition of anonymity that around 60 arrests had also been made.
