Ivory Coast sentences jihadists to life in prison in 2016

On Wednesday, an Ivory Coast court gave life sentences to four Malians who were found guilty of helping with a terrorist attack on a beach resort that killed 19 people.

According to Judge Charles Bini, the court in Abidjan, the nation’s economic centre, found the four “guilty of the actions for which they are accused and sentences them to life imprisonment.”

The first jihadist assault in Ivory Coast, one of West Africa’s economic powerhouses, occurred on March 13, 2016.

Three men carrying assault rifles assaulted the beach at Grand-Bassam, a resort 40 kilometres east of Abidjan that is popular with Europeans, before targeting hotels and restaurants in a raid that echoed an Islamist slaughter that took place in Tunisia the year before.

When Ivorian security officers shot the assailants dead, the 45-minute bloodbath came to an end.

Nine Ivorians, four French citizens, a Lebanese, a German, a Macedonian, a Malian, a Nigerian, and an unidentified individual made up the 19 fatalities.

33 people of various nationalities suffered injuries.

The same day, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a North African branch of al-Qaida, took credit.

It claimed that the attack was carried out in retaliation for French and allied anti-jihadi operations in the Sahel and singled out Ivory Coast for having given AQIM agents to Mali.

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Later, several other people were caught, including three alleged accomplices of the assailants who were killed and were being held in Mali.

According to Public Prosecutor Richard Adou, 18 people were charged in Ivory Coast with terrorist actions, murder, attempted murder, criminal concealment, unlawful possession of weapons and ammunition, and “complicity in these deeds.”

“We need to scare off the people who support these terrorist crimes,” he said at the end of his argument before the decision was made on Wednesday.

“Horror and barbarism have been thrust upon us.”

Only four of the 18—Hassan Barry, Hantao Ag Mohamed Cisse, Sidi Mohamed Kounta, and Mohamed Cisse—were in court.

They supposedly had a supporting role.

Before the trial, Aude Rimailho, an attorney for French civilian plaintiffs, said that the 14 additional defendants, including the alleged masterminds, were either at large or were being detained in Mali.

Of these 14, seven were given life sentences in absentia, while the other seven were found not guilty.

Eric Saki, the defence attorney, admitted he had “mixed feelings” regarding the decision.

“I am glad for those who have been found to be completely innocent, but I am sad for the four who, in my opinion, also merited an acquittal,” the speaker said.

In a series of occasional strikes on nations on the Gulf of Guinea south of the Sahel, the attack on Grand-Bassam was the first and deadliest up to this point.