The Prosecutor’s Office requests life imprisonment for four defendants for the 2016 attack in Gran Bassam, in Ivory Coast

Dec. 22 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Ivory Coast Prosecutor’s Office has demanded life imprisonment against the four defendants for the attack carried out in March 2016 in the coastal city of Grand Bassam, which left nearly 20 dead and whose authorship was claimed by Al Qaeda in the Maghreb Islamic (AQIM).

The prosecutor Richard Adou has demanded during the seventh hearing of the trial an “exemplary and dissuasive sentence” to “discourage anyone who prepares to commit this type of act, to kill innocents”, as reported by the Radio France Internationale station.

The four defendants who are appearing in the trial because they are in custody are the man who drove the vehicle that transported the attackers, the owner of the place where they lived and two people who would have provided the terrorists with weapons.

Amadou Camara, lawyer for nine complainants, has called on the court to apply “the severity of the law” in order to “set an example.” In total there are 18 people charged with murder, attempted murder and terrorism, although most remain on the run.

The attack was carried out by at least four men armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles in a tourist complex frequented by Westerners in the Ivorian town of Grand Bassam (south). The terrorists attacked up to three hotels and later fled, leaving behind hand grenades and a couple of chargers.

Jihadist groups, mainly the affiliates of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in the Sahel, have multiplied their actions in recent years in Mali, Burkina Faso and western Niger, and the governments of the region fear that they could continue to spread their activity towards the coastal countries of West Africa.