Ivory Coast authorities have arrested opposition chief Pascal Affi N’Guessan as a part of a rising violence towards those that challenged the presidential re-election for a 3rd time period, opposition occasion officers mentioned on Saturday.
N’Guessan was arrested in Akoupé, a metropolis northeast of Abidjan, on his solution to Bongouanou, his ancestral homeland, based on a press release printed on the official web page of his Ivorian Fashionable Entrance.
The arrest comes after authorities arrested a top-ranking official from one other opposition occasion, Maurice Kakou Guikahue of PDCI.
The opposition has referred to President Alassane Ouattara’s re-election to a 3rd time period as an “election coup.” It tried to query the legality of his candidacy earlier than the October 31 vote and preserve the president had already served two phrases. Ouattara claimed he might drive once more attributable to a constitutional referendum in 2016.
N’Guessan and the opposite important opposition candidate, Henri Konan Bedie, boycotted the vote and mentioned shortly afterwards that they thought of Ouattara’s time period ended. The federal government known as the assertion “a rebellious act”.
On Friday, prosecutor Adou Richard mentioned N’Guessan can be prosecuted on costs of terrorism and assault by a state authority and that the authorities had been additionally on the lookout for one other opposition determine, Albert Toikeusse Mabri.
Nonetheless, prosecutors mentioned the 86-year-old Bedie was “neither arrested nor underneath home arrest.”
There was widespread worry of post-election violence in Côte d’Ivoire, the place greater than 3,000 individuals had been killed after a controversial vote a decade in the past.
Opposition leaders mentioned greater than 30 individuals had died in violence linked to this 12 months’s election.
