After serving as Minister of Justice in Guinea for four years he was executed by starvation by the regime of Ahmed Sékou Touré at Camp Boiro in 1977.

[1] Telli held the position of second Secretary General of OAU, holding that office for two terms from July 1964 until June 1972.

[1] The job was extremely challenging for him, as he expressed it involved negotiating a common viewpoint among the many leaders of African states, each of whom had divergent opinions.

[5] In an article published in the Fall of 1965, Telli acknowledged the difficulties and disputes but asserted that the organization had a flexible enough structure to deal with these problems, and asked what would have happened if there had been no OAU.

[7] A report on the OAU summit in Algiers in September 1968 covered Telli's position on the Nigerian Civil War.

Although the members generally supported Federal Nigeria, some countries such as Ivory Coast, Tanzania, Zambia and Gabon recognized Biafra.

[13] However, Telli obeyed party directives and was the author of the law of June 1973 that removed all independence from the judiciary, creating people's courts at the village and neighborhood levels.

His technical counselor at the time said that Telli was "naive, very nervous, often super-exited, very careless in his words and actions, full of candor and disordered in his work.

"[10] After the reconciliation between France and Guinea in July 1975, Sékou Touré suggested, at a meal celebrating the occasion, that Telli could be a suitable candidate to be Secretary-General of the United Nations.