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| - Ivory Coast's exiled former rebel chief and prime minister Guillaume Soro went on trial in absentia on Wednesday along with around 20 supporters over an alleged 2019 "plot" to overthrow the government. Soro, 49, who was also speaker of parliament in the West African nation from 2012 to 2019, has lived in exile for the past two years. He is charged with fomenting a "civilian and military insurrection" as he was planning a return to the country in December 2019 to run for president -- a bid that was quashed by the Constitutional Court. Soro was one of some 40 candidates barred from running. His co-defendants include two of his brothers; former minister and MP Alain Lobognon who was considered his right-hand man; and several other former MPs, all of whom have been held awaiting trial for the past 18 months. Soro's lawyer, former minister Affoussy Bamba, is also in exile and being tried in her absence. They face life imprisonment if convicted. All have denied any wrongdoing. The team of lawyers defending Soro dismissed the trial as a "sham", a "political settling of scores" aimed at sidelining Soro and his movement from political life, in a statement Tuesday. On Wednesday, defence lawyers secured an ajournment for a week to give them time to study elements of the prosecution case they had not yet seen. Since last October's tense election, the former French colony has seen relative calm, with dialogue between the government and opposition parties and various opposition figures released from detention. Soro and his supporters however remain in the dock. President Alassane Ouattara, who won re-election to a third term after initially stepping aside, said in October that Soro -- a former ally -- would be jailed for life. Opposition figures judged that 79-year-old Ouattara's bid for a third term after his chosen successor died was unconstitutional. Soro called for the army to rise up against the president in a social media posting from abroad -- to little effect. Meanwhile his GPS party boycotted March legislative elections, unlike other major opposition groups that sought to de-escalate tensions. During Ouattara's decade in power, Ivory Coast has doubled its GDP and enjoyed relative stability since emerging from the ruins of a 2002 civil war that split the country between north and south, and the 2010-2011 post-election crisis. Soro, whose rebel forces controlled northern Ivory Coast in the 2000s, helped Ouattara militarily a decade ago. Incumbent Laurent Gbagbo had refused to concede defeat to Ouattara after the 2010 election, sparking a bloody conflict that claimed some 3,000 lives in the world's top cocoa producing country, formerly a beacon of stability and prosperity in the region. In the years that followed, Soro and Ouattara gradually drifted apart, until early 2019 when the rupture became final over Soro's presidential ambitions, analysts say. Soro was sentenced in April to 20 years in prison for "concealment of embezzlement of public funds", a conviction that torpedoed his candidacy. de/jhd/gd/tgb/bp
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