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| - Ivory Coast's former rebel leader and ex-prime minister Guillaume Soro was sentenced to life in prison in absentia on Wednesday for plotting to overthrow his estranged ally and current president Alassane Ouattara in 2019, a verdict he decried as politically motivated. It was a dramatic reversal of fortune for the former firebrand student leader who propped up Ouattara in an abortive coup in 2002 that plunged the world's top cocoa producer into low lying civil war and split it in half. Soro, 49, a former speaker of the National Assembly, was accused of fomenting a "civil and military insurrection" ahead of presidential elections in October 2020 which were controversially won by Ouattara. He was tried and sentenced in his absence by the court in Abidjan where tight security was enforced at the end of a trial that began on May 19. Two other defendants, his close associates Souleymane Kamagate and Affoussy Bamba, received 20-year sentences. Seven soldiers and two of Soro's brothers -- Simon and Rigobert -- and his former aide Alain Lobognon got 17-month jail terms for "disturbing public order". The court also ordered the confiscation of the assets of Soro, who lives in exile, and those of his 19 co-defendants. His Generations and Solidary Movement will be dissolved for committing "subversive acts". The defendants were also ordered to pay one billion CFA francs (150 million euros) to the Ivorian state. Sixteen of the 20 accused were present in court. Judge Charles Bibi ordered an arrest warrant for the four others living in exile, including Soro. Ouattara had earlier hinted at Soro's fate saying in October: "That one, he will get a life in prison." Soro immediately denounced the ruling saying it "was out of the bounds of law and dictated purely by political considerations". "The ultimate goal of this trial... is to definitively exclude me from the political field in Ivory Coast," he said. "This shows once again... the voluntary submission of the Ivorian judiciary to the diktats of the executive." Souleymane Diallo, one of the defence lawyers, told reporters: "We are not surprised by this decision. We have observed during the trial... the absence of proof and the negation of all the rights of the defence." He called the ruling "a settling of political scores", adding that he would "use all means at the national and international levels" to overturn the decision. The former rebel chief's scheduled return to Ivory Coast in December 2019 after a six-month absence, to be a candidate in the following year's polls, had raised tensions in the West African country, where a 2010-2011 election ended in a deadly conflict between rival supporters. Soro then aborted his planned return by diverting his flight to Ghana as security forces stormed his party headquarters in Abidjan. Soro helped Ouattara become president in 2011 after incumbent Laurent Gbagbo refused to concede defeat, plunging the country into violence that claimed around 3,000 lives. After the 2011 crisis, Soro's New Forces rebels were mostly integrated in the Ivory Coast military. In 2017, some of those ex-rebels inside the army mutinied over their pay and conditions. Soro had been Ouattara's prime minister in 2011 and was named National Assembly speaker in 2012 -- a post he held until 2019. But the two men slowly drifted apart and observers attribute this to Soro's presidential ambitions. ck-stb/ach/har
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