Three weeks after being briefly arrested following a trip to Mali in a context of tensions between the two countries, the president of the Ivorian Citizen Alternative organization was arrested at the Abidjan police headquarters on Monday, August 22.
Pulchérie Gbalet was kept in custody overnight from Monday to Tuesday and then placed under a warrant of committal by the Abidjan court of first instance. While according to her lawyers, she came to the prefecture to recover her passport and mobile phone confiscated during the first hearing.
” Curiously, she arrives there, she is told that it is an interrogation in the presence of the lawyers, says one of them, Maître Lambert Kouamé Béné. She said “No, that’s not possible”. That’s not why she came, she came to pick up her cell phone and her passport. Finally, she was kept in sight, and it was on Tuesday morning that the commissioner called the colleague to ask him to come and assist his client with this procedure. He told him “no, that’s not how it happens”. »
In protest, his three lawyers decided not to assist their client in this case, explains Maître Lambert Kouamé Béné. ” This cavalier way of challenging people is not worthy of the rule of law. As lawyers, we cannot accept this. It is for this reason that we have decided not to participate in this procedure. We are waiting to see and therefore we have informed all the international institutions and organizations to say what is happening in Côte d’Ivoire. »