Souleymane Diallo Dies at 80; Daring, Mocking Journalist in Guinea

Souleymane Diallo, an independent newspaper publisher in the West African nation of Guinea who suffered harassment, official probation and even imprisonment for his irreverent take on the rule of his country’s oppressive leaders, died on June 1 in Montreal. He was 80.

His death, at a hospital, was confirmed by Mamadou Diawo Barry, the director of Le Lynx, the satirical weekly newspaper that Mr. Diallo helped found in 1992. Mr. Barry said that Mr. Diallo had suffered from heart problems. Mr. Diallo lived in Conakry, Guinea’s seaside capital, and had traveled to Canada, where his daughter Idiatou Diallo lives, for medical treatment.

Le Lynx stands out in a West African press landscape in which subservience is the norm. Year after year, as Mr. Diallo’s impoverished coastal nation reeled under a succession of power-hungry, trigger-happy military men and politicians who promised change, Le Lynx — named after an animal with a penetrating gaze — mocked, investigated, caricatured and chided.

From dingy offices in downtown Conakry, where the decrepit printing presses matched the peeling walls, Mr. Diallo was the ringmaster, inciting his young reporters and cartoonists to question and provoke whoever was in power. His own weekly columns — with recent headlines like “Silence, We’re Censuring!,” “Silence, We’re Lying!” and “Silence, We’re Messing Up!” — were equally provocative, skewering the powerful with lapidary precision.

In February 2024, he wrote that Gen. Mamady Doumbouya, who seized control of Guinea in a 2021 coup, “thinks we’ve actually mistaken the path, and the era: The internet is not a right, and social media, radio and other means of communication should only channel praise-singers following orders.”