IVORY COAST: IVORIAN COLONEL ACCUSES FRENCH TROOPS OF FIRING AT CROWDS OF PROTESTERS AFTER BEING ORDERED NOT TO
Record ID:
183679
IVORY COAST: IVORIAN COLONEL ACCUSES FRENCH TROOPS OF FIRING AT CROWDS OF PROTESTERS AFTER BEING ORDERED NOT TO
- Title: IVORY COAST: IVORIAN COLONEL ACCUSES FRENCH TROOPS OF FIRING AT CROWDS OF PROTESTERS AFTER BEING ORDERED NOT TO
- Date: 30th November 2004
- Summary: (W1)ABIDJAN, IVORY COAST (NOVEMBER 30, 2004)(REUTERS) 1. COLONEL GEORGES GUIAI BI POIN OF IVORIAN GENDARMERIE ENTERS FOR INTERVIEW 0.04 2. SOUNDBITE (French) COLONEL GEORGES GUIAI BI POIN SAYING: "There were no warning shots. There wasn't even any verbal warning and anyway they didn't even have the equipment to give a verbal warning, they didn't have a megaphone. The equipment wasn't the kind you would have to maintain order. They took the wrong approach." 0.25 3. CLOSE UP OF PLAQUE WITH TWO DECORATIVE PISTOLS AND SHILED 0.28 4. SOUNDBITE (French) COLONEL GEORGES GUIAI BI POIN, SAYING: "I intervened to tell him to tell his men to raise their guns, to tell them not to keep firing directly into the crowds. He gave the order to his men but not everyone raised their guns. Some carried on firing directly into the crowd, not everyone raised their guns." 0.47 5. CU: MORE OF PLAQUE 0.51 Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
- Embargoed: 15th December 2004 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: ABIDJAN, IVORY COAST
- Country: Ivory Coast
- Reuters ID: LVA7XHBW3YK35YPOWP0W7D207NII
- Story Text: Ivorian colonel accuses French troops of firing at
crowds of protesters after being order not to.
A high ranking officer in the Ivory Coast
Gendarmerie says French troops continued firing into a
crowd of Ivorian protesters, even after they'd been ordered
not to by their officer.
Colonel Georges Guiai Bi Poin said he saw an incident
where French soldiers were firing into a crowd of
protesters.
"I intervened to tell him to tell his men to raise
their guns, to tell them not to keep firing directly into
the crowds. He gave the order to his men but not everyone
raised their guns. Some carried on firing directly into the
crowd, not everyone raised their guns," Guiai Bi Poin said.
He said there was no warning given and the troops
appeared unprepared to deal with the situation.
"The equipment wasn't the kind you would have to
maintain order. They took the wrong approach."
The French Defence Ministry said in Paris on Tuesday,
(November 30) that French troops killed about 20 people in
Ivory Coast during unrest earlier this month.
The Defence Ministry admission came as controversy grew
over the French military's handling of the crisis.
France has strongly defended the troops in its former
colony, insisting they acted with restraint and only to
protect French and other foreign nationals from attacks by
militant supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo.
The latest crisis in the world's top cocoa grower began
when government forces broke an 18-month ceasefire to bomb
the rebel-held north and killed nine French soldiers in one
raid.
The French military had at first declined to state how
many people it had killed during the subsequent unrest and
maintained it had not fired on protesters. However a
Defence Ministry spokesman on Tuesday said an estimated 20
Ivorians were killed.
He said the victims, both citizens and soldiers, were
killed near the airport of the main city Abidjan on Nov. 6,
during the movement of French troops from the north to
Abidjan in the following two days and at the city's Hotel
Ivoire on Nov. 9.
The incident has come under particular scrutiny and the
senior Ivorian gendarme, who was on the scene, said French
forces fired on protesters venting anger at the troops for
occupying the hotel close to Gbagbo's residence.
"There were no warning shots. There wasn't even a
verbal warning and anyway they didn't even have the
equipment to give a verbal warning, they didn't have a
megaphone," Colonel Georges Guiai Bi Poin told Reuters in
an interview on Tuesday.
Human rights groups called on the French parliament to
investigate whether French forces overreacted to mob
violence which erupted after France destroyed the West
African country's air force in response to a deadly strike
on its peacekeepers.
"Shooting like this on civilian populations without
firearms goes far beyond the needs of maintaining order and
the mandate which has been given to the French armed
forces," the International Federation of Human Rights
(FIDH) said.
The French Defence Ministry's first official version of
events made no mention of French troops opening fire but
said Ivorian forces had fired to help the French leave the
hotel.
But Guiai Bi Poin, in command of all the gendarmes at
the hotel, said none of his men opened fire. The French
killed one gendarme and another man and others may also
have died, he said.
Television footage after the shooting showed the
headless corpse of a protester and several other bodies
looking lifeless.
The colonel said the protesters were unarmed but France
has insisted there were armed men in many crowds it faced
during the unrest, including at the hotel, and that its
troops fired only in self-defence -- and after firing
warning shots.
"There were clearly provocations that aimed to make the
French troops lose their composure. They did not," Defence
Minister Michele Alliot-Marie told France 2 television.
In its statement, made jointly with France's Human
Rights League, the FIDH charged the death toll was far
higher than France said, citing its sources as saying about
60 Ivorians had died in Abidjan.
Almost 5,000 French soldiers are in Ivory Coast, tasked
with supporting a U.N. peacekeeping force.
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