Prosecutor says 18 detained for planning to kill president

The government of Cote d'Ivoire said on Tuesday it had detained 18 people for questioning about an alleged plot to assassinate President Laurent Gbagbo, his wife and several senior officials. Military prosecutor Ange Bernard Kessi told a press conference in Abidjan that 11 military men and seven civilians were being held for questioning about a suspected plot to kill the president. Air force general Abdoulaye Coulibaly was released on Monday night after four days of investigations, because he had not been arrested in accordance with the proper legal procedures and insufficient evidence was found to link him to the conspiracy, Kessi said. However, two other top ranking officers, General Alain Mouandou, the controller-general of police, and General Soumaila Diabagate, a senior official in the defence ministry, were still being held for questioning, he added. Military sources told IRIN last Friday that more than 50 people had been arrested in Cote d'Ivoire in connection with the alleged plot. It was not immediately clear whether some of those thought to have been arrested had been released quietly or whether they were still being held secretly by the government. Kessi said he knew of no other people detained in connection with the plot other than the 18 he had mentioned. The French government has meanwhile detained 10 people on charges of conspiring to use mercenaries to commit acts of terrorism in its former West African colony. Many of the alleged conspiritors were linked to the military government of General Robert Guei which ruled Cote d'Ivoire from a coup d'etat in 1999 until fresh elections in 2000. One of them, Master Sargent Ibrahim Coulibaly, who was arrested in France, was also linked to a failed coup on September last year which plunged Cote d'Ivoire into civil war. Kessi said master sargent Coulibaly, commonly known by his nickname 'IB,' was the ringleader of the plot. "The constitutional regime was to be overthrown by a transitional committee headed by sargent IB," he said. Documents seized so far and information gained from interrogating the suspects indicated that this military junta would have arrested prime minister Seydou Diarra, but would have reinstated him at a later date, he added. Gbagbo signed a peace agreement with the rebels in January which led to the formation of a broad-based government of national reconciliation two months later, but the conflict has left the country sharply divided. The northern half of Cote d'Ivoire is still contolled by rebel forces, who have so far refused to demobilise and disarm. Kessi said the conspirators had planned to kill Gbagbo and his wife Simone, who is the parliamentary leader of the president's Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) party in Abidjan during the last week of August while they were driving in an official motorcade. On 26 August, Gbagbo unexpectedly postponed a ceremony to rename part of the capital's Boulevard Giscard d'Estaing Boulevard des Armees, in honour of those who died defending the country in the civil war. The military prosecutor said the conspiritors also planned to assassinate in separate attacks: Mamadou Koulibaly, the Speaker of parliament and his deputy Marthe Agoh; General Mathias Doue the military chief of staff; army commander General Denis Bombet and Charles Ble Goude, a prominent leader of the pro-Ggagbo youth groups known as the "Young Patriots." Those found guilty could be sentenced to life imprisonment, he noted. Martin Bleou, the president of the Ivorian League of Human Rights, said his organisation would condemn any attempt to overthrow the government by force if the alleged conspiracy proved to be real. But he stressed that the human rights of all those detained should be "rigourously respected" and all those charged should be given a fair trial in accordance with the law. This concern for the well-being of detainees was echoed by French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin. He said in an interview with Radio France Internationale on Monday: "My wish is that the procedures put in motion in Cote d'Ivoire are carried out within the ambit of the law and within the respect of human rights."