You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Africa: Subsaharan
Gbagbo claims French troops 'decapitated' protesters
2004-11-22
Ivory Coast leader Laurent Gbagbo said Saturday he believed reports were true that French troops had decapitated local demonstrators during anti-French riots in the west African state this month. "I wasn't in the hospitals myself but everyone who went there said so: you may take it that the evidence provided by several people is true," he responded online from Abidjan to a website discussion in Paris. Asked by AFP, French army information services in Paris would say only: "We have no comment to make on this kind of statement." Cardinal Bernard Agre, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Abidjan, first made the decapitation charge, saying November 11 on Radio Vatican: "I have just come from the hospitals. It's unbearable, these young people decapitated by the French army."
Hummm, wonder if the French have any of the muslim rebels operating with their forces.
Catholic cardinal acknowledging that it happened? Good enough for me.
Thousands of Gbagbo supporters looted French property after French troops wiped out most of Ivory Coast's small air force earlier this month in retaliation for an attack by an Ivory Coast government air strike on rebel positions which also killed nine members of a French peacekeeping force. "If I had been consulted and informed before all the aircraft and military infrastructure of Ivory Coast were bombed things might not have got so out of hand," Gbagbo said in the online forum organised by the Paris magazine Nouvel Observateur.
Who ordered the bombing of the rebel/French position just before that?
Asked about alleged rape of French women during the riots, he said: "I'd like to remind you that 4,000 prisoners got out of jail that night. Draw your own conclusions".
Who handed them the keys to their cells? Scumbag.
Gbagbo said that during the riots 64 young people had been killed and some 1,300 injured "by the murderous bullets of French soldiers."
Body count seems to have gone up.
"We never had any anti-French or anti-white policy," he told the Paris discussion: "There has been much trouble in Ivory Coast. Many people have been afraid, many have even left Ivory Coast. Many have also returned and we will continue to live together." Gbagbo said his aim now was to calm matters after the riots so that normal life could resume.
And for his next trick, he's going to close Pandora's box.
Posted by:Steve

#5  The video didn't leave me with the warm and fuzzys. It looked like random shooting into crowds.
Posted by: 3dc   2004-11-22 11:48:31 PM  

#4  Two stories here: (1) are the Frenchies now using "overwhelming force?" I think not (lean toward the large calbier head shots, myself), and (2) why the heck are the MSM STILL using "I haven't seen it myself, but I know this pizza delivery guy who saw it and I believe him" type "witnesses?" (I think we all know the answer to that one.).
Posted by: BA   2004-11-22 11:02:11 AM  

#3  Anonymoose - my thinking exactly.... that video link the other day showing the head shot might qualify as decapitating - he was hamburger
Posted by: Frank G   2004-11-22 10:05:43 AM  

#2  Where's the outrage? Where's the film at 11?
Posted by: Mrs. Davis   2004-11-22 9:54:06 AM  

#1  I think "decaptitation" could be replaced with "large caliber head shot", to clear up any misunderstandings. Much of a muchness.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2004-11-22 9:49:41 AM  

00:00