After sixteen months in detention, Juan Rémy Quignolot left the Central African Republic to return to France. The 57-year-old former soldier, arrested on May 10, 2021 and notably accused of espionage, was authorized to return to France because of his fragile health. He had already been placed on probation in September 2022 for the same reasons. “His state of health continues to deteriorate” and “risks being detrimental to the life of the accused”, explained in a press release the president of the Indictment Chamber of the Court of Appeal of the Central African Republic, Laurent Ouambita.
“We welcomed him this morning at Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport. We are immensely relieved. My brother is very physically challenged and needs to rest,” his sister Caroline Quignolot told AFP. The man left the Central African Republic on May 18. According to information given to AFP to his family, he would have passed through Gabon, whose President Ali Bongo would have served as mediator between France and the Central African Republic. The judges at the origin of this decision nevertheless specify that “the accused may appear before the Criminal Court […] as soon as his state of health improves”. Juan Rémy Quignolot incurs forced labor in perpetuity.
former bodyguard
Two years later, the precise reasons which led to the arrest of this former sergeant in the French army, father of four children, remain unclear. A few hours after the Central African police raided his home in Bangui, photos of Juan Rémy Quignolot had leaked on social networks and in the local press. We saw the man handcuffed in front of an important arsenal, composed of weapons of war.
“He is accused of espionage, illegal possession of weapons of war and hunting, criminal association, and undermining the internal security of the State and conspiracy”, had detailed at the time Éric Didier Tambo, Attorney General at the Court of Appeal of Bangui. Facts that the French reject.
Juan Rémy Quignolot has lived in the Central African Republic for fifteen years. He had notably worked occasionally for several organizations as a bodyguard. Since May 2021, his family has been trying to secure his release. In particular, she published an open letter to President Emmanuel Macron, in which she describes Juan Rémy Quignolot as “a judicial hostage who has been abandoned by the French authorities”. His conditions of detention are particularly difficult, and the former French soldier had started a hunger strike in 2022 in order to denounce them.
The shadow of Russia
The French authorities strongly criticized this arrest, describing its media coverage as “manifest instrumentalization” aimed at “the presence and action of France”. Since 2018, relations between France and the Central African Republic have indeed deteriorated deeply, in particular because of the massive arrival of soldiers from the Russian Wagner group on the spot.
Since 2014, the Central African Republic has been in the throes of a deadly civil war. Faced with the risk of a coup d’etat, in 2020, President Faustin-Archange Touadéra called on Moscow for help. The Kremlin had dispatched hundreds of paramilitaries to the area, allowing the central power to maintain control over its territory, and in particular over the many diamond and gold mines that dot the Central African territory. Since then, members of the Wagner group have carried out guerrilla actions against the pockets of rebels that still exist in the country.
In 2021, Emmanuel Macron was worried about “Russian predatory mercenaries at the top of the state with a President Touadéra who is today the hostage of the Wagner group”. The French president had also denounced disinformation campaigns led by Moscow, with the aim of undermining the influence of France in his former colony, which remains one of the poorest countries in the world.