French weekly magazines review 15 October 2017

Leaked documents expose shady Françafrique dealings in the ICC's trial of Laurent Gbagbo while r Macron gets stuck in Sahel quicksand.

French weekly magazines DR

We start with a portrait of Liberian Presidential candidate George Weah published by l'Express as the magazine picked him to become the West African country's next leader.

With three quarters of polling stations counted the indications are that the former football superstar and the incumbent Vice-President Joseph Boakai are heading for a run-off.

"George Weah goes on the attack", is the title of the beautiful article in l'Express as the publication follows the extraordinary bid of the ex-Monaco and Paris Saint German superstar' for his country's highest office.

L'Express says his life has the trappings of a fairy tale story, adding that the fans of the "King" and 1995 Ballon d'Or laureate are hoping that he will be the same prolific goal scorer at the helm of the war-battered nation as he was during his fantastic football career.

This week's Marianne takes up new embarrassing revelations about scheming at the Hague-based International Criminal Court which it claims undermine the political neutrality of the institution currently trying former Côte d'Ivoire President Laurent Gbagbo.

This is after findings by nine media establishments including the French investigative website Mediapart that the judicial procedure launched against Gbagbo was carried out for the exclusive benefit of one of the parties in the Ivorian crisis -- the country's current President Alassane Ouattara.

According to the left-leaning weekly, some 40,000 confidential documents, which the media group laid hands on show that Luis Moreno Ocampo who was Prosecutor of the ICC at the time, was in contact with a French diplomat and Ouattara after French-backed forces overthrow Laurent Gbagbo and handed him over to pro-Ouattara rebels.

Marianne claims that despite a denial by Paris, a controversial e-mail shows that Ocampo asked his partners, meaning Ouattara and President Sarkozy's government in Paris, to detain Gbagbo, until an African country files a case against him at the International Criminal Court.

According to the Marianne, there was no legal basis at the time, warranting the ICC to begin judicial proceedings against Laurent Gbagbo, arguing that the affair looked like a plot hashed by the controversial Françafrique system..

Yet as the publication observes, Luis Moreno Ocampo who flew to Abidjan in June 2012 for a meeting with Ouattara, accused Gbagbo and his supporters of being "responsible for serious crimes". Marianne wonders on what serious investigation his claims were base.

Furthermore the left-leaning weekly reports that since the opening of Laurent Gbagbo's trial in January 2016 Moreno -Ocampo's successor Gambia's Fatou Bensouda has been dumbfounded by the collapse of depositions made against Gbagbo by witnesses.

Still as Marianne points out, that hasn't stopped the Court from rejecting a 12th application by the defence for Laurent Gbagbo to be released on bail. 

Le Canard Enchâiné satirizes President Emmanuel Macron's tough ride in the Sahel quicksand. This as he presses Mali, Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso and Mauritania to mobilize an anti-terrorism force capable of replacing the 4,500-strong French Barkhane Operation. 

The publication says the October 5 attack in Niger in which five government troops and four American specials forces were killed underscores the urgency of speeding up the process.

But as Le Canard observes, while France has pledged logistic, air support and drones for the G-5 Sahel force, only Chad's military has the experience to face the Al-Qaeda-backed and ISIS-allied jihadists based in lawless Libya.

According to the weekly, the idea that the G-5 nations will be able to set up the force has become an illusion.

It reports that a high-ranking military officer in one of the G-5 countries provided cover for trucks transporting Europe-bound South American cocaine from a Mauritanian port across several borders, into Libya.

Le Canard holds that while France goes looking for funds for anti-terrorism coalition, the ambitions of some the countries' military chiefs are more about making quick money from the "miraculous powder".