On April 15, the Assize courtroom in Paris convicted a Belarusian mercenary and two officers of the Ivorian air drive within the case of the bombing of the French camp Bouaké in 2004. Bombing that killed 10 folks and left 38 wounded. To this point untraceable, Colonel Patrice Ouei, one in every of the three convicted, has simply re-emerged within the Ivory Coast. He denies any wrongdoing and claims he didn’t participate within the bombing. If he asks to be heard by French justice, he nonetheless refuses to be a prisoner.
Colonel Ouei will he someday face French justice? The state of affairs appears most unlikely. Certain, the previous pilot who denies any involvement on this bombing says he is prepared to answer all summonses, however no French decide can interview him, because the Assize Court docket has dominated.
The best way for him to have the option to elucidate himself can be to nominate himself as a prisoner, which might then have the consequence of revoking the sentence from the Assize Court docket and result in a brand new trial. An challenge that Patrice Ouei doesn’t wish to hear about.
“He believes he’s harmless, he doesn’t should be detained,” mentioned his lawyer, Grasp Pierre Dagbo. “Those that declare to have issued an arrest warrant towards him can come and arrest him inside this framework, however he can not be a prisoner.”
And anyway, even when he had determined to achieve this off the Ivory Coast, the officer would definitely not have been extradited to France. For within the eyes of Ivorian justice, Patrice Ouei cannot be prosecuted for these details as a result of of an amnesty regulation adopted in 2007. The one answer then: that the colonel himself involves be captured in France. A state of affairs that’s rejected once more by the particular person involved.
► Learn additionally: Trial towards the bombing of Bouaké: the three defendants sentenced to life imprisonment
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