Ivory Coast authorities said two generals were among 18 people suspected of being the “brains” behind a coup plot designed to kill the west African country’s President Laurent Gbagbo, his powerful wife and other political chiefs. Their strategy was to ambush a presidential cortege as it passed through the main Ivorian city Abidjan with “a very powerful weapon such as a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launcher,” Commander Ange Kessi, prosecutor of the military tribunal trying the would-be putschists, told journalists Tuesday. “Eleven military and seven civilians were among those arrested,” Kessi said in Abidjan, where the 20 to 30 coup-related arrests were also announced last week. He did not reveal the identities of the generals and when the 18 were detained. In the line of fire, according to Kessi, were Gbagbo — whom rebels had tried to overthrow during a civil war launched last September — his influential wife Simone and National Assembly Speaker Mamadou Koulibaly. Full Story
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