Ivory Coast: at the Grand-Bassam trial, hoteliers tell of strange visits before the attack
The entrance to the courtroom where the Grand Bassam attack trial is taking place, guarded by Ivorian police officers, in Abidjan on November 30, 2022. © Sia Kambou / AFP
Text by: RFI Follow
3 mins
At the trial of the attack in Grand-Bassam on March 13, 2016, four new witnesses were heard on the fourth day of the hearing, this Thursday, December 8.
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With our correspondent in Abidjan,
Bineta Diagne
Patrick Colin is a hotel manager.
For nearly an hour, this witness gave many details on the course of the attack, and on
the profile of the attackers
.
"
There were two of them, they arrived on foot, armed with Kalashnikovs
," he recalls.
One of the two was "
very well trained
", and the two attackers already seemed
to know the place
, notes this official.
"
They were barefoot, walking very quickly in the sand
", specifies this hotelier.
The two witnesses also expressed their suspicions regarding the preparation of the attack.
Nearly a month before the attack, Patrick Colin recounts the passage of "
people whom we are not used to seeing in Bassam
".
The hotelier evokes, for example, the visit of several people, including a "
religious
" man with a white beard, he specifies, inspecting the swimming pool of the establishment.
He had asked her, "
Do you have a lot of white people here?"
“
The question surprised me a bit
,” says Patrick Colin.
Same observation made by Louise Sailli, who works in another hotel.
This lady notes the passage “
of a single man
.
He shoots, he visits the premises and just orders a fruit juice
.
After the attack, these two witnesses note that these visits abruptly ceased.
They were not able
to identify these suspects among the four accused present
, presented as having contributed to the logistics of this attack claimed by AQIM which had killed 19 people.
Full house
As always since the opening of the trial on November 30, the criminal court was again full on Thursday.
Shortly before 1 p.m., several dozen people crowded outside the courtroom.
Each has been carefully checked: no pen, no perfume, no sharp object.
Among the public, there is Mamadou Diakité, a pensioner, who attends the trial out of curiosity.
This old man lives in the commune of Port Bouët, where some of the accused come from.
“
There are too many
'we say',
so I thought I would have liked to be present myself to see what it is.
People say that these are people who attacked, they say they come from Burkina and others from Mali, we don't know anything.
So we ourselves want to hear the statements of the accused and then know what it is, to have the truth
”, he justifies.
The interrogation of the accused, but also of the witnesses, plunges the public back into the details of the attack.
An event that everyone is trying to better understand.
“
People say certain things, but, given what the victims may be saying, I think you have to be there to understand better,
notes Robert, lawyer.
But I give a lot of credit to that, because it's part of my general culture too.
»
The hearings are filmed by the court, to allow foreign civil parties who were unable to make the trip to follow the thread of the procedure.
The trial resumes on Wednesday, December 14.
It is due to last until December 22.
Ivorians explain why they want to attend the trial of the Grand Bassam attack in person
Bineta Diagne
►
To read also:
George Philippe Ezalay: "A terrorist attack in Grand-Bassam was unimaginable"
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