The trial of former Ivorian prime minister and rebel leader, Guillame Soro, started earlier this week, with the man himself held in absentia. The charges levelled against Soro accuse him, and 19 other accomplices, of plotting a coup against the current president, Alassane Ouattara. The defense of Soro vociferously denied the validity of the charges, calling it a shameless example of political score-settling through the guise of the judicial system.
Soro and Ouattara were not always enemies. Indeed, Soro was the leader of the rebel group that brought Ouattara into power during the 2010 election; Soro served as Prime Minister and then President of the National Assembly under Ouattara until 2019, when the two fell out when Soro expressed presidential ambitions himself. Since their split, Soro has undergone a self-imposed exile in France, which has brought with it a bevy of other legal ordeals. He was already convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to 20 years in prison earlier this April. Soro’s political supporters maintain that these charges against him are solely politically motivated in nature, and bear no resemblance to the man’s actual character or actions. Many of his more vocal supporters have been jailed in the Ivory Coast.
Whether or not these charges of coup plotting have any merit is hard to know, especially from an ignorant outside perspective. Indeed, it is possible that Soro is an ambitious but corrupt crook; he also has a dubious military record from the country’s two civil wars, with accusations of war crimes levied against him. Yet he also seems to have a fervent group of supporters, that bemoan his downfall as a political outrage. I would ideally defer all of my judgement to the outcome of the trial, yet even this seems possibly politically tainted.