There was no indication of such a heavy sentence. At the Abidjan courthouse, it is usually small offenses that pass in immediate appearance, for sentences of a few months in prison or even simple fines. Thursday, March 9, when the President of the Court announced a two-year prison sentence for twenty-six of the twenty-seven defendants crammed into the box, there was bewilderment in the audience.
Quickly handcuffed, the convicts come out under close police surveillance and are brought back to the Abidjan remand center (MACA), where they were already in preventive detention. Nerves worn by the long hearing, which ended more than 9 p.m. in the small, overheated room, relatives screamed their despair as the police evacuated them: no place for goodbyes .
The twenty-six condemned, they hardly flinched. Men and women of all ages, they had a neat speech and dress despite the preventive. Far, very far from the usual population of the court of flagrante delicto, often young men accused of theft, in T-shirts and lêkês, these cheap plastic shoes considered the prerogative of petty thugs. The profiles listed by the judge hinted at a middle-class and CSP contingent: “Antoine Blehouah Kore, retired philosophy professor, residing in Angré. Amissah Mambre, 39, lawyer, residing in Yopougon Sicogi. William Jean-Fiacre Guigui, energy-environment consultant, residing in Marcory. “Prestigious CVs and wealthy neighborhoods.
A “catch-all” ground for conviction
For all, the reason for the conviction is the same: “disturbance of public order”. A “catch-all” concept had denounced the defense from the outset, and which in this case did not cover any criminally reprehensible act. On February 24, these members and supporters of the African Peoples’ Party-Côte d’Ivoire (PPA-CI), the party of former President Laurent Gbagbo, gathered in the wealthy district of Cocody Angré to show their support for Damana Pickass, one of their leaders.
A long-time faithful of Laurent Gbagbo and former member of the Student and School Federation of Côte d’Ivoire (Fesci), he was considered one of the faces of the post-election crisis of 2010-2011. At the time, he made himself famous by snatching the presidential results from the hands of the spokesperson for the electoral commission and tearing them up live on television. After ten years of exile in neighboring Ghana, he was able to return to Côte d’Ivoire on April 30, 2021, and was appointed Secretary General of PPA-CI.
Last February, Damana Pickass received a summons from the special investigation and counter-terrorism unit for February 24, without the reasons being specified yet. According to a press release subsequently published by the public prosecutor Richard Adou, Mr. Pickass would be involved in the attack on a military camp in the town of Abobo, which occurred on the night of April 20 to 21, 2021, and which had caused three dead and one injured. “A conspiracy between Ivorian and Liberian fighters,” according to the prosecutor. The person concerned denies, recalling that he was on that date in exile in Ghana but he will be charged with “undermining state security, participation in terrorist activities, money laundering and possession of weapons”, and placed under judicial control.
It was during a “general mobilization” to “accompany the secretary general and give him the support of the party” that thirty-one people were arrested. Four are released, the other twenty-seven were judged on Thursday. The only one to have been acquitted is a driver victim of a combination of circumstances, who came to drop off another defendant at the Shell station.
Peaceful political life
At the end of the trial, Me Sylvain Tapi, one of the defense lawyers, fumed. ” We do not understand. There can be no convictions without an offence, and yet that is what we just witnessed! We are all the more surprised that in Côte d’Ivoire currently, the political climate is peaceful, ”continues the lawyer.
After the violence that took place during the 2020 presidential election which saw Alassane Ouattara be re-elected for a controversial third term, political life has calmed down. The legislative elections of March 2021 had taken place in calm, the opponents Laurent Gbagbo then Charles Blé Goudé were able to return to the territory after their acquittal by the International Criminal Court. We even saw last month the three heavyweights of Ivorian politics, and rivals for decades, Alassane Ouattara and his predecessors Laurent Gbagbo and Henri Konan Bédié, gathered in the capital Yamoussoukro for the awarding of the Félix-Houphouët-Boigny- Unesco for the search for peace.
A fragile balance that the sentence pronounced Thursday could well crack. Joined by Le Monde, the deputy secretary general in charge of political detainees at the PPA-CI, Patrice Kouté, denounces a political trial. “We want to weaken the PPA-CI,” he says. This condemnation will cause tension when the “political dialogue” had begun and the local elections are taking place next October. And that is not good! The French are currently demonstrating against the pension reform. They are in the street, they give voice. In Ivory Coast, everything is forbidden! We can’t talk, we can’t walk, we can’t demonstrate. »
In addition to the twenty-six supporters of Damana Pickass, there are several people arrested the next day for waving a Russian flag during a PPA-CI meeting, and imprisoned in turn at MACA. None of them were members of the party, according to Mr. Kouté, who denounces an unfounded arrest and recalls that no law in Côte d’Ivoire prohibits holding a Russian flag. Amnesty International, which has followed these two waves of arrests, reveals that the five men with the flag – according to their count – are incarcerated at MACA in the so-called “armoured” building, usually reserved for criminals. The prosecutor’s office declined to respond to the press.
