Missing journo witness held

2004-05-26 20:06

Abidjan - A key witness in the disappearance last month from the Ivory Coast city Abidjan, of independent journalist Guy-Andre Kieffer has been taken into police custody, the presidency said on Wednesday.

Michel Legre, whose sister-in-law Simone is the wife of President Laurent Gbagbo, has been in police custody since Tuesday, Gbagbo's office said.

Questioning of Legre, with whom Kieffer was alleged to be meeting on the day of his disappearance, was to begin on Wednesday.

Legre has already spent 10 hours testifying in front of French Judge Patrick Ramael during a recent trip by the jurist to Ivory Coast.

French judicial sources have confirmed that during his testimony, Legre implicated several key players in Ivory Coast's financial and political circles in Kieffer's abduction.

The 54-year-old journalist, a dual French and Canadian national and long-time Abidjan resident, was reportedly bundled into a car by uniformed men on April 16 and driven away from a busy shopping centre parking lot.

His cellphone has since been switched off and his car discovered abandoned in the parking lot at Abidjan airport several weeks later.

The journalist's wife, Osange, said from Paris that Legre named Lia Sery, a military police officer who was "directly involved" in her husband's disappearance before he was spirited away to Liberia, presidential security chief Patrice Bailly and Pastor Moise Kore, the Gbagbos' "spiritual advisor".

Also fingered in Legre's testimony as the money behind Kieffer's abduction, according to Osange Kieffer, were Seka Yapo Anselme, one of Simone Gbagbo's former bodyguards, and former defence minister Bertin Kadet, who now serves as a presidential adviser.

The same roster of culprits was published across the spectrum of Ivory Coast's fiercely partisan media on Tuesday.

- AFP