Arrest Warrants
France and Côte d'Ivoire have both issued international arrest warrants for Coulibaly. On March 10, 2008, a trial of Coulibaly, involving his alleged plot to seize power and kill Gbagbo with mercenaries in 2003, began in Paris. Coulibaly was tried in absentia; his lawyers said that they did not know where he was. 12 co-defendants were on trial with him, and most of them were present, having been arrested in France in mid-2003. On March 11, Coulibaly denied the charges in an interview with Agence France-Presse, saying that he had never attempted to recruit any mercenaries in France. According to Coulibaly, he was in Belgium at the time of the interview and would not go to France to participate in the trial. He claimed that the legal proceedings against him were intended to keep him from returning to Côte d'Ivoire to run against Gbagbo in the 2008 presidential election.
The French court found Coulibaly guilty of "heading or organising a group with mercenary objectives", and sentenced him in absentia to four years in prison on June 4, 2008. Five of his co-defendants were acquitted and the remaining seven were given sentences lighter than Coulibaly's.
Read more about this topic: Ibrahim Coulibaly
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“An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.”
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948)