Nine French soldiers killed, a former Belarusian mercenary and two Ivorian officers judged by default and many gray areas: the trial of the bombing of Bouaké in 2004, at the origin of an unprecedented crisis between France and the Côte d ' Ivoire, opens Monday in Paris.
In early November 2004, Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo went on the offensive in an attempt to reunify his country, cut in two for two years and an attempted rebel coup.
Its planes pounded the rebel positions towards the North, under the anxious eye of the French peace forces deployed since 2002 between the two camps to avoid a civil war.
On November 6 at around 1:20 p.m., two Ivorian hunters flew low over a French camp in Bouaké.
Suddenly one of them dives and fires rockets.
On the ground, it is panic, then horror and astonishment: we deplore nine French soldiers and an American civilian killed, as well as forty wounded.
Read also: Ivory Coast: in Bouaké, the mystery still hangs over the death of nine French soldiers
In retaliation, Paris destroyed the entire Ivorian military aviation the same day, ruining its ongoing offensive.
Relations between Paris and its former colony, historically very close, ignite.
In the days that followed, violent anti-French demonstrations rocked the south of the country.
Overnight, thousands of expatriates returned to France in disaster, flanked by French troops.
On November 10, in the courtyard of the Invalides in Paris, President Jacques Chirac pays solemn tribute to the soldiers killed in Bouaké.
“We won't forget you
,” he promises.
But fifteen years later, their murderers are still running.
Suspects released
After bombing the French camp, the two Ivorian Sukhoï-25s landed at the airport near Yamoussoukro.
On the tarmac, their crews - Belarusian mercenary pilots employed by the Ivorian army and their Ivorian co-pilots - are photographed and filmed by the French intelligence services.
Three men are, on the basis of numerous testimonies, accused by the French justice of having perpetrated or supervised the bombardment: the Belarusian Yury Sushkin and the Ivorians Ange Magloire Gnanduillet Attualy and Patrice Ouei.
Tried for murder, they are the only defendants in the trial which opens Monday for three weeks before the Paris Assize Court, where they face life imprisonment.
In absence, because they fled and have almost never been arrested ... On November 16, 2004, eight Belarusians from Côte d'Ivoire, including Yury Sushkin, were arrested in Togo, which made them available to the French authorities .
But these, curiously, answer him to release them.
Already in the aftermath of the attack, fifteen Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian mercenaries were arrested by French soldiers in Abidjan.
But the group, which could include potential suspects, was released four days later.
According to the instruction, French embassies, soldiers and intelligence agents had all been instructed
not to “get involved”
in this affair.
Some explained that the priority at the moment was to protect the French in Côte d'Ivoire.
Bitterness and suspicion
The investigators also examined the role of three ministers at the time, Michèle Alliot-Marie (Defense), Dominique de Villepin (Interior) and Michel Barnier (Foreign Affairs).
But justice refused to seize the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR), the only one empowered to judge ministers.
They are nevertheless summoned to appear at the trial, as witnesses.
The investigation was therefore confined to the suspected perpetrators, Belarusians and Ivorians.
Without being able to answer the questions that have haunted the families of victims for fifteen years: who gave the order to bomb the French and why?
The French ministers and staff have always favored the hypothesis of an Ivorian "blunder" organized by Laurent Gbagbo or his entourage to make people forget their military offensive which was slipping, or to break definitively with France.
Civil parties side, the feeling of a legal fiasco feeds bitterness, even anger.
And sometimes the suspicion, over the procrastination and contradictory statements of French officials.
Some of the relatives of the victims and the Gbagbo clan suspect a "French manipulation" that would have gone wrong, a plan organized to trigger a French reaction and overthrow the Ivorian president, deemed not to be docile enough, and replace him with his rival Alassane Ouattara.
The latter will succeed Laurent Gbagbo, ousted from power in 2011 with the military support of Paris after a contested presidential election.
Me Jean Balan, lawyer for several families of victims, denounces a hidden agenda of former French ministers, who deny it outright.
"
This is the only logical explanation for their determination to cover up the case and hide the truth," he
says.
