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I Coast 'coup plotter' rejects trial
12/03/2008 08:30 - (SA)
Abidjan - Former Ivory Coast rebel leader Ibrahim Coulibaly on Tuesday declared he would not go to Paris where he was on trial in absentia over a 2003 coup plot in the west African nation.
The 44-year-old former head of the Patriotic Movement of Ivory Coast (MPCI) also denied hiring a team of mercenaries with a view to overthrowing Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo.
"I have not changed my position since 2003 when I was arrested in France. I never went to France to recruit mercenaries," Coulibaly, alias IB, said, claiming he was "in Belgium".
He rejected the idea of going to Paris, where a trial opened on Monday against him and 12 others accused of plotting to assassinate Gbagbo.
He said: "I told my lawyers that I will not be in France because I do not think this trial is important."
Gbagbo 'used' mercenaries
His lawyers on Monday said they did not know Coulibaly's whereabouts. Recently he was based in exile in Benin after being banned from returning to Ivory Coast in December.
Coulibaly claimed the trial was just a manoeuvre "to prevent me from returning to my country and running as a candidate against Gbagbo" in presidential elections expected to take place this year.
He said he knew two of the other accused, but none of the alleged mercenaries. "I've never seen them, they've never seen me, they have never spoken to me on the phone," he said.
Instead, he claimed that Gbagbo was the one who used mercenaries during Ivory Coast's conflict that left the country split in half with the rebels in control of the north and the government forces in the south.
'Identity problem'
A former Ivorian army officer, Coulibaly spearheaded the September 2002 coup in which rebels seized the north, but was later sidelined by Guillaume Soro, head of the rebel New Forces and now Ivorian prime minister.
"I took up arms so that the international community would know that there was a problem in the Ivory Coast," he said, adding it was a problem of "xenophobia, an identity problem".
The ex-rebel chief said he was "a politician, that is I have put down my weapons".
He said he was determined to return to the Ivory Coast, where he was also targeted by an international arrest warrant issued by Ivory Coast, which opened a separate case against him in January over an alleged coup bid in December.
Coulibaly also denied those allegations and claimed he had been framed. He said: "I've launched an inquiry and when I have all the facts, I will go before the Ivorian justice with the evidence."
- AFP
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