Trial in 2016 Ivory Coast attack set to get underway, On Wednesday, 18 defendants will stand trial in Ivory Coast for their alleged roles in one of West Africa’s deadliest terrorist assaults, a machine-gun massacre on a beach resort in 2016 that claimed 19 lives. However, just four of the 18 will be present in person for the eagerly anticipated events in Abidjan, the country’s commercial center. According to Aude Rimailho, an attorney for civil litigants, the others are either evading capture or being detained in Mali.
Trial in 2016 Ivory Coast attack set to get underway
Three men stormed Grand-Bassam, a popular vacation spot for foreigners 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of Abidjan, on March 13, 2016. They had assault rifles and other weaponry. In a move that echoed a terrorist massacre that had occurred in Tunisia the year before, they invaded the beach before attacking a number of hotels and restaurants.
The three were shot dead by Ivorian security forces, which put a stop to the 45-minute slaughter. The same day, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), an affiliate of Al-Qaeda in North Africa, took credit. It claimed that the attack was in retaliation for French and allies’ anti-jihadist operations in the Sahel and singled out Ivory Coast for having sent AQIM militants to Mali.
– Terrorism, murder charges –
Several dozen people were arrested, including three suspected accomplices of the dead attackers, who were detained in Mali. The charges against the 18 include acts of terrorism, murder, attempted murder, criminal concealment, illegal possession of firearms and ammunition “and complicity in these deeds,” Public Prosecutor Richard Adou said last week.
Nineteen people were killed — nine Ivorians, four French citizens, a Lebanese, a German, a Macedonian, a Malian, a Nigerian and a person who could not be identified. Thirty-three people of various nationalities were wounded. Ramalho, representing French plaintiffs, said those on trial were “small fry” and cautioned against seeing the proceedings as a chance for closure.”The people who planned the operation are in Mali,” she said.
The prospects of seeing them on trial there are clouded by “the chill between France and Mali,” she said, referring to a breakdown in relations between Paris and the Malian ruling junta. Mali is the epicenter of a decade-long jihadist revolt that has shaken the Sahel, claiming thousands of lives and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.
Grand-Bassam was the target of the first and bloodiest of a series of sporadic attacks on nations south of the Sahel that were located on the Gulf of Guinea coast. Members of France’s Barkhane anti-jihadist team arrested Mimi Ould Baba Ould Cheikh, a crucial suspect, in January 2017. Investigators in the Ivory Coast have identified him as one of the perpetrators of the Grand-Bassam attack, and Burkina Faso has identified him as the “operation leader” of the January 2016 attack that claimed 30 lives in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso.
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