Côte d’Ivoire’s Justice Department is pursuing a new lead in the disappearance of a French-Canadian journalist, the state prosecutor said on Saturday.
Guy-Andre Kieffer, who had dual French and Canadian citizenship, disappeared three years ago and is presumed dead. His case has made headlines following a well-publicised meeting on Thursday between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the wife of the missing journalist.
Sarkozy promised to use his influence to get answers out of Côte d’Ivoire, where the journalist was last seen at an Abidjan mall on April 16 2004.
Kieffer, 54 when he disappeared, had worked for the French economic newspaper La Tribune from 1984 until 2002. He then began working in Abidjan as an independent journalist, writing articles about corruption in Côte d’Ivoire.
At the time of his disappearance, Kieffer was investigating corruption in the cocoa trade, a touchy subject in Côte d’Ivoire, the world’s leading producer of cocoa.
One of the people already being investigated in the case is Michel Legre, a brother-in-law of President Laurent Gbagbo’s wife. But in his statement to reporters, state prosecutor Raymond Tchimou said that the link to the Presidency was a ”false lead”.
”For a long time, we were led to believe that it was the president of the republic that had invited Guy-Andre Kieffer to Côte d’Ivoire. And we followed this lead,” Tchimou said. ”For three years, the false lead pointing to the Presidency made us travel in circles when in fact there was another lead we could have followed.”
Tchimou said that Kieffer came to Côte d’Ivoire not as a journalist, but as a consultant to a local company. New information has surfaced indicating that this could be worth investigating, Tchimou said, without elaborating.
He said that members of the Justice Department hoped to travel to France and Switzerland to interview possible witnesses. — Sapa-AP