Ouattara
Ivory Coast bars public protests until September
Ivory Coast has banned all outdoor protests until 15 September, according to a statement Thursday issued after deadly clashes ahead of presidential elections in October. The cabinet late Wednesday “decided to suspend protests in public areas, authorising them only in enclosed spaces… until 15 September,” the government said in a statement. The measure “draws the consequences of the impact, in human and property terms, from previous demonstrations and the risk that pockets of inter-community conflicts could open up,” it said. On 13 August, angry protests erupted in the economic hub Abidjan, and demonstrations in the central town of Daoukro turned to bloody ethnic clashes, after President Alassane Ouattara announced he would bid for a third term. Critics of Ouattara say the 78-year-old is on...
Ivory Coast’s Guillaume Soro faces war crimes lawsuit in France
File Photo Ivory Coast’s former prime minister Guillaume Soro, a rebel leader before he entered politics, is facing a lawsuit in France for war crimes, torture and murder, lawyers told AFP. The plaintiffs say the case is being filed in France because Soro has been living in the country since 2019. Late last month, he was handed a 20-year jail term in Ivory Coast for embezzlement, money laundering, and buying a mansion in the West African country’s main city Abidjan with public money. The Abidjan court fined him nearly seven million euros ($7.6 million), ordered the confiscation of his Abidjan home and barred him from civic duties for five years, which effectively eliminates the 47-year-old from contesting presidential elections due in October. Soro denies all accusations. The latest lawsui...
