'They ruined our lives': victims of French army Ivory Coast shootings still seeking compensation

CrimesCrimes against humanity. That is how Lucie Bourthoumieux describes what occurred between November 6th and 9th 2004 in Ivory Coast, when soldiers from the French army's Operation Licorne peacekeeping force opened fire on local civilians.

The shootings took place against a backdrop of simmering tension between the former colonial power France and the Ivorian government of President Laurent Gbagbo. These tensions burst into the open when nine French soldiers were killed in a rocket attack by a military jet belonging to the Ivory Coast's armed forces but flown by a Belarusian pilot. Reprisals carried out by the French military then sparked demonstrations in the capital Abidjan, in which a number of protestors were shot dead.

Lucie Bourthoumieux, a lawyer who advises the collective COPAVIL which was formed in 2005 to support Ivorian victims of the shootings, says: “These were acts of violence, attacks against a civilian population, against people who were there out of patriotism, most of whom, if not all, were not affiliated with President Laurent Gbagbo's Ivorian Popular Front.”

Shortly after the events, the Ivorian authorities announced that 57 civilians had been killed by gunshot or shell fragments, or trampled or suffocated to death, and that 2,226 others were injured.

These figures were revised upwards in 2009 after research conducted by COPAVIL, which documented 90 deaths and more than 2,500 people injured, at least a hundred of whom were permanently disabled. There were also several dozen people who disappeared, notes Lucie Bourthoumieux.

There were no deaths recorded among French civilians living in the West African country. Approximately 8,000 French nationals, some of whom lost everything, left Ivory Coast at the end of 2004, either permanently or temporarily. In addition three allegations of rape or attempted sexual assault, as well as 21 complaints over acts of violence and looting, led to judicial investigations.

Controversy over figures

However, the toll reported by Ivory Coast is still disputed by French political and military officials. Paris has stuck to the statements made by its Ministry of Defence on November 30th, 2004, which claimed that Operation Licorne, which had the status of a peacekeeping force, killed only “about twenty” Ivorian civilians and military personnel.

The minister of defence at the time, conservative Michèle Alliot-Marie, insisted that the use of lethal weapons occurred “only in two circumstances, when the lives of French soldiers were directly threatened”. The French military acted in accordance with “all the rules of international law on engagement of fire”, she said.

Human rights organisations dispute this version of events. Amnesty International, which unsuccessfully urged the French government to establish an independent commission of inquiry, has accused French forces of “using excessive force on certain occasions when faced with demonstrators who did not pose a direct threat to their lives or the lives of others”.

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) has accused France of “continually downplaying the scale of the tragedy caused by the brutal intervention of its armed forces” around the Hôtel Ivoire in the capital Abidjan on November 9th, 2004. “French forces fired live ammunition from helicopters and on the ground at the demonstrators [...]. These military actions far exceeded the mandate given by the United Nations,” the organisation stated. And it has called on France to clarify the “reasons why its intervening forces destroyed all the military assets of a sovereign country with which it was not at war”.

Pressure and “plotting”

As for ONUCI, the United Nations peacekeeping operation that was in Ivory Coast along with Operation Licorne, a diplomat has revealed that it produced a “detailed” report on the events of 2004 which was “damning for the French forces”. However, this document has never been made public.

Was there pressure from the French authorities to stop it coming out? According to Paul Moreira, who worked for TV channel Canal Plus, the authorities exerted influence on the media, at least. It was a report from his programme '90 minutes', broadcast on November 30th 2004, that forced the Ministry of Defence to admit that the French army had fired on civilians, and pushed defence minister Michèle Alliot-Marie to invent the concept of “extended self-defence”. The backlash was severe: the '90 minutes' programme was scrapped a year later.

In Ivory Coast there is still a belief that senior French figures attempted a coup d'état during those four days of violence. Jean Balan, a lawyer for the families of French soldiers killed in the Bouaké bombing on November 6th 2004, has also come to this conclusion, as has General Renaud de Malaussène who became second in command in Operation Licorne in 2005, after these events. “I believe that a plot was orchestrated by French politicians,” the general explained in 2016.

Indeed, this particularly turbulent period was ripe for all kinds of plotting by the various French political networks and interests who were operating in and around Ivory Coast.

The possibility that Ivorian officials, particularly the army's Chief of Staff, Mathias Doué - who went into exile at the end of 2004 and died in 2017 – themselves took part in an attempt at destabilisation is also frequently raised. “I don’t believe there was local complicity,” says former president Laurent Gbagbo. “But I realised, after appointing him, that Doué was working more with French officials than with me. He was working more with the French officials and the Licorne command than with me.”

The trial held in France in 2021 about the initial Bouaké bombing – in which the French soldiers were killed - did little to dispel suspicions, as it neither identified who ordered that attack nor clarified the numerous contradictions and lies from the French political and military authorities - who twice allowed the Belarusian pilots of the two planes involved to get away. The war waged by Paris in 2010-2011 to oust Laurent Gbagbo from power further strengthened the theory of a long-term process, with the events of November 2004 being merely one stage.

Looking back, French officer General Luc de Revel, who was present in Ivory Coast during 2004, does not consider that there was a political plan, and instead blames poor handling of the events. “I believe, without absolving the Ivorians who were loyal to the then regime of their responsibilities, that France reacted too impulsively,” he says. “The fire erupted all at once, everyone was caught up in it, and few of those involved were able to take the time to reflect.”

He is convinced that a different course of action on November 6th “could have prevented the tragic events that followed”. He continues: “The Ivorians certainly started it, as they bombed us, which was terrible. But we then made immediate decisions without having the necessary perspective and reflection to analyse the situation that had been created, and, in particular, the terrible consequences of our reaction.”

The officer observes, however, that it is “easy in hindsight to see that a particular decision led to a certain consequence but, at the time, it was possible to have a different view”. He added: “Not everything was a mistake, an error, or poor command; many admirable things were done and, despite everything, some of the decisions taken were the right ones.”

It was the “intransigence” of French president Jacques Chirac on one side and that of President Gbagbo on the other that was the root cause of this tragic story, according to another senior French officer. In any case, the way in which France conducted itself has left a lasting impression in Ivory Coast and beyond.

Shocking photos of the dead and injured at the Hôtel Ivoire circulated widely across the African continent at the time. “It was the first major media and political defeat for France in Africa,” observes an Ivorian lawyer. Meanwhile Mamadou Koulibaly, former president of the the country's National Assembly, suggests that the “seeds of what current officials in Paris call ‘anti-French sentiment’ were planted during this particular period in November 2004”. Former Ivorian government minister Moïse Lida Kouassi sums it up this way: “It was a painful episode for us, but France will pay the price for it for a long time to come.”

The victims, meanwhile, have not gone away. Until Alassane Ouattara came to power as president in 2011, the Ivorian state covered the medical expenses of many of the injured, some of whom underwent multiple operations and spent many months in hospital. The state also supported COPAVIL itself.

But there has been no financial compensation. The Ivorian state has never started legal action, nor has COPAVIL. “President Gbagbo used to say that the tension between Paris and Abidjan was so high that it was best not to further provoke the French. He wanted to wait until the crisis was over to address the matter,” recalls Martial Akoun, former president of COPAVIL.

“If I wanted to file a complaint, it would be several complaints,” says Laurent Gbagbo today. “Because when the rebellion started in 2001 and continued until my arrest in 2011, there was a lot of involvement from the French army. We even found crates of weapons [editor's note, intended for the rebels and coming from France] delivered to Ouagadougou [editor's note the capital of Burkina Faso, the rebels' rear base] marked ‘For Ivory Coast’.” If the state had chosen to file complaints during those years, he adds, “we'd have spent our time starting legal proceedings rather than governing the country”.

During Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency from 2007 to 2012, Lucie Bourthoumieux, acting on behalf of COPAVIL, approached the Élysée to seek an amicable settlement. The French presidency directed her to the justice minister - Michèle Alliot-Marie - but no further action was taken. Since then, the 2010-2011 war and the change of president in Ivory Coast have disrupted everything. While the French companies that suffered damage in November 2004 received compensation in 2011, the demands of COPAVIL's members have been forgotten.

“We no longer even feature in the official Ivorian databases. The principle of state continuity should oblige the current authorities to help the victims and their dependants,” notes Salomon De Lasme, the current president of COPAVIL. Some of the injured still suffer from severe health problems that require fresh, delicate and costly surgery. Others, due to their disabilities, are unable to support their families, he points out.

“If you knew how many comrades have died due to lack of care...” sighs Claude Sodoua, who has been using crutches since his leg was amputated. And while it is vital that the Ivorian state supports the victims, COPAVIL believes it is also time for France to accept its responsibilities. “France must acknowledge its wrongs towards Ivory Coast and towards us, the victims, and make amends for the harm we have suffered,” say its members.

“France does not acknowledge having injured me, an unarmed woman who threatened no one. Yet all the evidence is there. What did I do to the French army?” asks Hélène, 51, whose arm was shattered by a bullet and who remains disabled. “It's our right to defend our country if we believe it is under attack. And we went to defend it with our bare hands,” she recalls, hoping that she can “awaken French public opinion”.

Laurent Gbagbo, who plans to run in the next presidential election in 2025, believes that the “Ivorian state must compensate the victims. I'm not opposed to the French state compensating them, but what I want most is for the Ivorian state to do so as well. That's what concerns me the most.”

For now, Hélène is keen to express the deep sense of bitterness that has gripped her for twenty years: “We've been abandoned by our own state. Ivorian politicians say they have given us what they could, but in reality, they've done nothing. Not one of them has come to see me, for example. Yet it was because of them that we took to the streets. I hold the French army responsible, but I also hold them responsible. They have all ruined our lives.”

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• The original French version of this article can be found here.
  This is the fourth and final part of a series on the events of November 2004 in Ivory Coast. The first article in the series can be found here. The other two, in French, can be found here.

English version by Michael Streeter