On 3 and 4 October 2015, Mr. Djibril Yipéné Bassolé was heard by officers of the
Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the military establishment, and was
charged on nine (9) counts by the military trial judge, before he was put in
detention. The principal charges made against him were: “violation of State
security”, “colluding with foreign powers to destabilise internal security”,
“murder”, “wilfully causing harm and injury”, “wilful damage of property”.
In mid-November 2015, the press reported on “rumours” of the telephone lines
of Mr. Djibril Yipéné Bassolé having been tapped, and certain conversations
recorded thereby. Again, it was in connection with those rumours concerning
the tapping of his telephone lines, that recorded conversations alleged to have
taken place between him and Mr. Guillaume Soro, President of the National
Assembly of Cote d’Ivoire, may have been obtained and identified to have
occurred on 27 September 2015. It is alleged that Counsel for Mr. Djibril Yipéné
Bassolé asked the trial judge whether those allegations against his client had any
basis at all, but the trial judge never deemed it fit to respond to the
correspondences of the plaintiff counsel.
In connection with the same procedure instituted against him, the Applicant was
equally denied the choice of certain lawyers “of foreign nationality”, against
whom the provisions of Article 31 of the Martial Code of Burkina Faso were
applied thus: “Subject to specific provisions provided for by international
conventions, lawyers of foreign nationality are debarred from appearing before
the military tribunals.”
It was under those circumstances that Mr. Djibril Yipéné Bassolé brought his
case before the ECOWAS Court of Justice, asking the Court to:
“Declare that it has the jurisdiction to entertain the Application;
Declare that the Application is admissible;
Find that Burkina Faso did not respect its international obligations; it allowed the
adoption of measures which jeopardised the actualisation of his rights, namely,
that it allowed, outside the legal framework, the introduction and transcription
of a recorded telephone conversation in a criminal trial proceeding in which he
was a party, and secondly, it dismissed the lawyers of foreign nationality in the
same trial, against his free will;
Order Burkina Faso to scrupulously respect international instruments of its
Constitution within the limits of his rights and consequently:
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