Ivory Coast: Guillaume Soro tried in his absence in Abidjan

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Guillaume Soro is to be tried at the TGI in Abidjan in one of the cases for which he is being prosecuted in Côte d'Ivoire. Namely, embezzlement of public funds, concealment and money laundering. But Guillaume Soro, who is the subject of an arrest warrant issued by the Ivorian justice, has been in Europe for almost a year where he declared his candidacy for the Ivorian presidential election scheduled for the end of October. And the African Court of Human Rights has just ordered the suspension of the arrest warrant issued against him. 

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With our correspondent in Abidjan, Pierre Pinto

At the heart of this affair: the purchase of his residence by Guillaume Soro in 2007, when he was Prime Minister. According to the prosecutor, this luxurious building would have been bought with public funds but would never have been transferred to the patrimony of the State. And still according to Richard Adou, when the Treasury officer notified him on December 20, he would immediately have opened an investigation. 

Guillaume Soro is being pursued in this case with alleged accomplices, including his Soul To Soul protocol director, Souleymane Koné Kamaraté, but it is only that the former Prime Minister should be tried on Tuesday. And tried in his absence since he is in France. In the absence also of his lawyers , who dispute the merits of this hearing that they decided to boycott.

Since the end of December, Guillaume Soro and 19 of his relatives, or lieutenants have also been prosecuted in particular for "attempt to attack the authority of the State". On April 22, the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights ordered the Ivorian State to suspend the arrest warrant issued against Guillaume Soro and to provisionally release his 19 supporters in preventive detention . In its judgment, the Court "  also considers it necessary (...) to observe the status quo ante until its decision on the merits  ". 

For the defense, all procedures should therefore be frozen until this next decision of the African Court, expected in June, and the proceedings launched against Guillaume Soro by the Ivorian justice are only a “  judicial masquerade  ” intended to prevent his candidacy for the presidential.

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• Ivory Coast
• Justice
• Guillaume Soro

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