Trial of Gabon former presidential aide political: group

Gabon opposition leader Mike Jocktane is being tried in reprisal for accusing his former boss of funding French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign, a civil society group said Wednesday.

A former aide to Omar Bongo, who died in 2009 after 42 years at the helm of the oil-rich former French colony, Jocktane faces charges of disrupting public order during a 2011 protest in a trial set to resume on Thursday.

“The trial which will take place tomorrow is nothing but payback: yet another political trial,” the pro-opposition civil society group “Ca Suffit Comme Ca” (Enough is Enough) said in a statement.

“All those who follow Gabon’s political news know that Mike Jocktane has been put on trial for what he said about the briefcases” of dirty cash, the group said.

Jocktane was a close aide to Bongo from 2005 and chief of staff in his office from 2009 before defecting to the opposition.

In a book on France’s African networks published in November and entitled “The Scandal of the Ill-gotten Gains”, Jocktane claims Bongo helped finance Sarkozy’s victorious 2007 campaign.

The issue was not broached when the trial opened under tight security on January 19. Jocktane, who founded his own charismatic church years ago, appeared in his bishop’s robe and pleaded not guilty.

He is accused of destroying public property and disrupting public order during an opposition demonstration in January 2011. Jocktane says he was not even at the protest.