Journalists in Ivory Coast remember French colleague killed 20 years ago

Ivorian and foreign journalists on Thursday paid homage to the memory of Radio France International correspondent Jean Helene, who was shot at point-blank range by a police officer in Abidjan 20 years ago.

On the evening of 21 October 2003, Helene, RFI's 50-year-old correspondent in Abidjan, was shot in the head by a police sergeant with a Kalashnikov.

The French reporter had been waiting near the national police headquarters for the release of eleven opponents of the regime of the then Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo.

On Thursday, at a commemorative ceremony at the press center in Abidjan, government spokesman Amadou Coulibaly recalled that the killing had taken place in a "particular context of socio-political tension", a rebellion had broken out in 2002 cutting Ivory Coast in two.

Helene's death is "a hideous scar, a shameful scar on the history of the press in Ivory Coast," he said, adding that although the policeman who fired the fatal shots, Theodore Dago Seri, had been sentenced in 2004 to 17 years in prison, "those responsible are still with us".

Without mentioning any names, he recalled that the political leaders at the time had called on supporters "to be inventive, to take initiatives" against those accused of not being on their side.

Representing RFI at the commemoration event, the station's former Africa department head, Yves Rocle, said that Helene, who had crisscrossed the African continent throughout his career, including covering the Rwandan genocide in 1994 — had been dedicated to reporting the facts. 

After the ceremony, the assembled journalists made their way to the spot where Helene was gunned down, where bouquets were laid.

Next week, RFI will commemorate the 10th anniversary of the murder of another of its journalists, Ghislaine Dupont, who was shot dead in northern Mali in November 2013, along with technician Claude Verlon who was accompanying her.