The mysterious disappearance of an independent Canadian-French journalist late last week dominated the daily press in the Côte d’Ivoire main city of Abidjan on Monday.
Guy-Andre Kieffer (54) was last seen on Friday at about midday in a commercial area of downtown Abidjan. The married father of three is an economic and financial writer specialising in reporting on Côte d’Ivoire’s main cash crop, cocoa.
Kieffer, who has been employed by various French publications operating in Côte d’Ivoire, also had a stint as a member of a cocoa advisory board to the Ivorian government. Tensions between the board and the government have caused the consultations to be suspended.
The embassies of both France and Canada, as well as the United Nations, are closely monitoring the situation, with French and Canadian diplomats making official overtures to local authorities.
Kieffer has made no contact with anyone since Friday, amid rumours that he was seen being forcibly escorted into a vehicle by armed, uniformed personnel.
Further rumours swirled throughout the weekend that a white corpse had been found dumped in an Abidjan suburb, but ”nothing concrete has been established”, a diplomat said.
The pro-government dailies among Abidjan’s fiercely partisan press called Kieffer’s presumed abduction the latest ”plot” against the administration of President Laurent Gbagbo.
Notre Voie, the mouthpiece of Gbagbo’s Ivorian Popular Front, described what it called Kieffer’s ”fake abduction” as a crude attempt ”to denigrate the Ivorian government”.
But opposition dailies speculated over whether Kieffer had not already been killed and sought to assign blame.
The paper Le Patriote pointed fingers at several high-ranking ruling party officials, while the daily Courrier d’Abidjan, nominally aligned with the ruling Ivorian Popular Front, warned that Kieffer’s disappearance not be politicised before the case was solved.
Is the incident a piece of ”theatre or an affair of the state”, it asked.
The daily noted that following the October 21 2003 slaying of Radio France International correspondent Jean Helene, local media did not spare efforts to sully the reporter’s reputation, accusing him of being a spy for intelligence agencies or demeaning his coverage of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
Helene was killed at point-blank range by a police sergeant, who was convicted in January and sentenced to 17 years in prison for the murder. — Sapa-AFP