In France, the verdict has just been announced at the trial of the bombing of the French camp in Bouaké. At the end of almost three weeks of trial, the court has just sentenced the three defendants, Yury Sushkin, the Belarusian mercenary, Ange Gnanduillet and Patrice Ouei, the two Ivorian officers, to life in prison.
With our special envoy to the Paris Assize Court, Pierre Firtion
The verdict was announced early in the afternoon by the president of the Paris Assize Court: life imprisonment against the three accused. Yury Sushkin, the Belarusian mercenary, Ange Magloire Gnanduillet and Patrice Ouei, the two Ivorian officers, were convicted of murder and attempted murder.
An expected verdict since the Advocate General had called on Thursday morning to such a condemnation. But will this verdict be enough to calm the families of the injured and the victims? Not so sure, because the three accused, absent from this trial, will not serve their sentences. The Advocate General also admitted this morning that the probability that they would one day be arrested was “low”.
Then, to discomfort civil partiesthese three-week hearings will not have made it possible to know who exactly ordered the bombing of the French camp and why France did not arrest the alleged Sukhoi pilots provided by Togo while, as the Advocate General is reminded this morning, the legal framework existed to do it? “It is not up to the court to discuss the reasons why the French authorities rejected the offer of the Interior Minister of Togo,” the president of the court said in the statement.
However, the President of the Court, who said “regrets” that “the judicial and judicial authorities have neither consulted nor informed about this capital law information.”
.
