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The four defendants at the trial of the Grand-Bassam attack, which killed 19 people in March 2016, were sentenced to life imprisonment on Wednesday, December 28. The court agreed with the opinion given by the public prosecutor when rendering its verdict. Six other defendants, absent, also received life imprisonment in absentia.
With our correspondent in Abidjan, Marine Jeannin
After five weeks of trial, the court followed the position of the public prosecutor, Richard Adou. He had asked last week, an exemplary and dissuasive sentence and demanded life imprisonment for the four defendants present in the room.
The four men present at the hearing, Hantao Ag Mohamed Cissé, Sidi Mohamed Kounta, Mohamed Cissé and Hassan Barry, were accused of being accomplices in the attack which claimed the lives of 19 people in the seaside town of Grand-Bassam . They had helped the jihadists with accommodation, transport and location scouting.
The remedies envisaged
The four have always denied knowing the criminal intentions of the organizers of the attack and have claimed their innocence since the start of the investigation, without managing to convince the court. After the hearing, their lawyer, Me Saki, said ” his sadness for these four people who should have been acquitted. The court should have gone all the way. But we do not despair, because remedies exist “. The defense had asked for an outright acquittal. She now has twenty days to appeal.
In total, they were eighteen accused. Among them, seven absentees, on the run or in detention in Mali, were sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment. Among them are Kounta Dalla and Ould Baba, the two brains of the operation. The latter is also suspected of being the chief of operations of the January 2016 attack in Ouagadougou, which had killed 30 people.
All were accused without distinction of “terrorist acts, assassination, attempted assassination, concealment of criminals, illegal possession of firearms and munitions of war and complicity in the said acts”. Seven of them were acquitted.
Between relief and frustration for the civil parties
The news was received with relief by the civil parties who were waiting for the trial to finally end. The civil parties had been waiting for this verdict for nearly seven years. They were also granted compensation. Financial compensation for the families of victims, but also for those whose economic activities have suffered from the attack.
Patrick Colin, the owner of the La Nouvelle Paillote hotel which was stormed by the terrorists is a survivor of the attack: “ We must end this matter. I think it’s good to get to the end. For me, personally, and for the families too, it’s important. At one point, we even wondered if it was going to succeed. But all is not done, since the major leaders are not there. It lacks the brains, the sponsors. »
But there is also a sense of frustration. The lawyer for the civil parties, Me Rimailho, who had not been able to travel to Abidjan to attend the trial, recalled that the four defendants present were only, ” small hands of logistics and that the brains were missing. She would also have liked a gradation in the penalties applied according to the seriousness of the acts carried out, she said.
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