A court in Ivory Coast has freed on bail two generals, Soumaila Diabakate and Alain Mouandou, held for three months in connection with a suspected coup bid, judicial sources said on Friday. The two men, who were released with six other soldiers by the Abidjan Court of Appeal, were arrested at the end of August while on active service. The state prosecutor then announced 18 arrests overall in the main city. "The case against them is empty because there’s no evidence at all for the accusations," Hyacinthe Sarassoro, a lawyer for the two generals, told AFP.
| That's what their mouthpiece sez, anyway... |
Soon after the arrests, military prosecutor Major Ange Kessy said that "sufficiently similar objects and documents" had been found in Ivorian police searches to haul in "soldiers who were to carry out an attack of state security, an assassination and subversive acts in the terrorist range". Sarassoro riposted on Friday that "these papers are tracts with no legal value". The alleged mastermind of a planned coup against President Laurent Gbagbo, whose country is already split in two by a civil war, is a self-proclaimed leader of the Ivorian rebels who lives in exile in France, Ibrahim Coulibaly. In all, 11 soldiers and seven civilians were arrested in Ivory Coast. Coulibaly himself was arrested in Paris in August for allegedly plotting another coup against the Gbagbo government. He was released on bail in September but has been banned from leaving France.
| Unless he suddenly becomes president of Ivory Coast, of course... |
On December 16, Coulibaly gave a Paris court a request to have proceedings against him dropped. Two of his aides, a lawyer and the suspected financier of the alleged plot, have made a similar judicial request. French prosecutors are investigating 14 people in connected with the alleged plot. |