Coalition partners threaten to challenge Ivory Coast president at polls

(Reuters) - Prominent members of Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara's main coalition partner on Thursday rejected a deal by their party's leader to support Ouattara's bid for re-election later this year.

Their party, the Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI), is still expected to endorse the deal at its party congress on Saturday. But the four dissidents are threatening to present their own candidacies and challenge Ouattara at the polls.

"Backing Ouattara again would finish the PDCI off once and for all. Ouattara's stubbornness to cling to our political party (PDCI) means alone he can not win any elections," Kouadio Konan Bertin, the party's former youth leader and currently a member of parliament, told a press conference in the commercial capital Abidjan.

He was joined by ex-Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny, former foreign affairs minister Amara Essy and a former deputy speaker of parliament, Jerome Brou Kablan.

On Thursday, the four PDCI dissidents said they would defy the party congress if it supports the arrangement between Ouattara and Bedie and would stand in this year's elections anyway.

"We won't be independent candidates," Banny said. "We will be PDCI candidates."

The agreement they were rejecting was struck by former President Henri Konan Bedie, the leader of the PDCI. He announced in September that his party would not field a candidate in elections expected in October and would throw its support behind Ouattara.

After finishing third in the first round of the last election in 2010, Bedie's support in a run-off swept Ouattara to power. In exchange for its support, the PDCI gained the post of prime minister, along with several other key government portfolios.

Then-President Laurent Gbagbo refused to accept defeat in the election and plunged the world's top cocoa grower into a civil war that killed some 3,000 people.

Ouattara, a former senior International Monetary Fund official, has won praise for reviving the Ivory Coast economy following the civil war. In a sign of renewed confidence, investors placed nearly $4 billion in orders for a $1 billion Eurobond which Ivory Coast marketed on Tuesday.

It had been four years since her arrest, that Simone Gbagbo, the former first lady of Ivory Coast had not expressed herself in public. On Monday February 23, 2015 she promised to do it with "satiety" and from this point of view, the audience of the Court was not disappointed. Everyone took for his rank. And from this point of view, Simone Gbagbo supporters were not disappointed. Most disappointing however, were the accusations as they unfolded. Once again, no specific facts, no hard evidence to support the constitution in gangs, rebellion or identity theft. No piece of evidence has been presented if it is a videotape of a meeting at the Palace of Culture, a few testimonials dependents, based mostly on rumors. And in the end, no concrete evidence against Simone Gbagbo.

Unconvincing testimony

Nothing has destabilized the "Iron Lady" Ivorian who never lost her composure throughout the hearing, if not two times she clearly marked signs of irritation against the prosecution, whose emptiness questions were greeted by her sarcasm "Let people judge me on facts and not on what they think. He who accuses me of having committed mass killings, should give evidence, " Simone Gbagbo replied

Simone Gbagbo

Ivory Coast's ex-first lady Simone Gbagbo in court debut

Ivory Coast's former first lady, Simone Gbagbo, has denied wrongdoing for her alleged role in the violence that followed the 2010 elections.

Ms Gbagbo was giving evidence for the first time at her trial in Abidjan.

Her husband, former President Laurent Gbagbo, is awaiting trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

He refused to accept defeat in the presidential elections, sparking months of violence that claimed more than 3,000 lives.

"I don't know exactly what the concrete actions are that I am being accused of," Mrs Gbagbo said at the hearing, according to the AFP news agency.

She also insisted her husband was the legitimate winner of the elections instead of his rival, Alassane Ouattara, who was declared the winner of the poll.

Police had to separate supporters and opponents of the Gbagbos as scuffles broke out outside the court.

Mrs Gbagbo and more than 80 supporters of her husband have been charged with undermining state security.

Both sides have been accused of atrocities in the bloody clashes that followed the disputed elections.

The Gbagbos were eventually arrested in a bunker in April 2011, five months after the elections, following a military assault supported by UN and French troops.

Ivory Coast's former first lady Simone Gbagbo on Monday questioned the charges against her as she appeared in court for the first time accused of undermining state security.

"I don't know exactly what the concrete actions are that I am being accused of," Gbagbo said, insisting also that her husband Laurent Gbagbo was the legitimate winner of a 2010 presidential election that sparked five months of violence that claimed some 3,000 lives.

"Laurent Gbagbo, my husband, was the winner of the 2010 presidential elections. I blamed France - the colonial power- of interfering in the Ivory Coast  post-electoral dispute. The French army air- bombed our presidential residence for ten days while no UN resolution gave France that power. It is to believe that the goal of France, was the physical elimination of the elected president Laurent Gbagbo."

Ahead of her appearance, police moved to separate supporters and opponents of the Gbagbos as scuffles broke out outside the courtroom.

"Simone Gbagbo did nothing!" exclaimed a nearby man who called himself "Ble Goude Junior", after the ex-leader of the extremist Young Patriot movement that long supported Gbagbo. "She was the first lady. She wasn't a soldier. She shouldn't be here."

For almost a month, a succession of politicians, journalists and other Gbagbo supporters have been questioned before the court, including a former prime minister and seven other ex-ministers, but no witnesses have been called to challenge their testimony.

When journalists were accused of incitement to hatred, no press articles, broadcast recordings or video items were brought forward to back the prosecution claims.

Like the defendants, the political opposition and representatives of civil society have denounced bias and "victor's justice" in the trial.

No one close to Ouattara has been investigated or prosecuted in connection with the violence that rocked the commercial capital for five months, but his supporters are widely believed to have committed atrocities.

Mutilation of Children in Ivorycoast

Decapitated corpses have turned up in the Ivory Coast after a wave of child murders - with one attacker calmly telling police that God had told him 'to cut off children's heads ... and then I would be made king.'

More than 20 children have vanished in the past few months, with their bodies found mutilated.

But one suspected killer was caught after he tried to attack two boys while they were fetching water from a well in in Yopougon, a suburb of Abidjan, on January 25.  

Those gathered around the well watched in horror as Cedric, 14, and Souleymane, 10, were attacked by Drissa Coulibaly with a machete. 

Souleymane was in shock, but he survived, unlike many victims of a wave of child murders in the Ivory Coast. 

He said: 'The man came out with a machete. I fell down. He started to hack at me.' 

The would-be killer went after Souleymane, then Cedric, before a soldier from a nearby base saw what was happening and chased the man away. 

'I thought he had come to collect water, said Cedric. 'But he pulled out a machete. He tried to cut me up.' 

 As word spread, soldiers from the nearby base quickly fanned out and tracked down the attacker. 

Once in police custody, he reportedly confessed to at least three murders. 

Giving his name as Drissa Coulibaly, the suspect wore a red and white robe, filthy after months of living on the street. 

He calmly told police that God had told him 'to cut off children's heads ... and then I would be made king.' 

'God told me to do this. God told me to cut off children's heads and bring them to him and then I would be made king,' Coulibaby, 38, told AFP from custody.

'I told him that I didn't want to do this but he insisted,' he added. 

His goal was to win his 'swords' of royalty, and he said he communicated with God by way of 'angels' in the shape of crows.

'Either he is very intelligent (and pretending to be mad) or he is very crazy,' one investigator said. 

God told me to do this. God told me to cut off children's heads and bring them to him and then I would be made king 

 Drissa Coulibaly

Cedric's mother, market seller Daniele Kone, was present when the attacker was questioned by troops.  

'He's a very confident man. Not a madman,' she said. 'He is used to doing this.'

She told AFP that the suspect 'said he had already killed three children' for Internet clients known as 'browsers', a charge Coulibaly has since denied. 

Browsers is the term used for delinquents who specialise in Internet scams and are widely regarded as behind the child murders, though proof is scanty.

Father Norbert Abekan, a charismatic Abidjan preacher, charged in an article last week that some browsers sought 'human sacrifices the better to swindle'.

'Fortunately, his machete was not well sharpened,' Corporal Habib Tito said after the search. 'He was determined to get the two children.

'Had it not been for the presence of one of our men, the smallest boy would be dead,' he added.

At least 20 children have not been as lucky as Souleymane and Cedric. 

In the last two to three months, police opened 25 unexplained cases of child kidnappings, followed by murders, across the country.

First Lady Dominique Ouattara spoke out Tuesday against 'horrible and inhuman acts that nothing can justify'.

'It isn't right that parents should grow anxious each time their children go out of the front door of their houses,' she said.

Police called the murder toll extremely high, saying it is 'a real and unusual phenomenon', which has shocked Ivorians and spread fears that youngsters have become victims of ritual sacrifices.

Brindou M'Bia, the director general of national police, has said most bodies have been found 'mutilated, with their genital parts missing, or decapitated'.

'We know the typology of ritual crimes very well,' Interior Minister Hamed Bakayoko added.

'People are led to believe that through these crimes, they can gain power or money.'

He said 1,500 police and troops were being mobilised 'to patrol the areas with a high crime rate'.  

The spate of child killings has prompted some hysterical responses, from warnings posted on Facebook to alarmist text messages. Kidnappings are reported on an almost daily basis.

'Thieves of children grab them by force even from grown-ups or kidnap them around schools, or even go into homes pretending to be visitors or census agents,' an SMS sent to an AFP journalist charged.

The impoverished west African nation, which has suffered a decade of political and military crisis, is set to hold a presidential election in October.

The wildest rumours about people disappearing for human sacrifice in rituals, particularly albinos, always circulate in the Ivory Coast in electoral years when politicians seek gains at the polls.

The kidnappings have led to calls for action from the U.N. children's agency UNICEF, which urged authorities to do everything possible to quickly identify those responsible.

'UNICEF is deeply worried by the kidnapping of children and the mutilated bodies that have been found,' Adele Khudr, UNICEF'srepresentative in the Ivory Coast, said in a statement.