The request of two French people, found guilty of having wanted to assassinate the president of Madagascar, to cancel their sentence of ten and twenty years of forced labor was rejected on Friday August 26 by the Malagasy Court of Cassation, after a expeditious hearing where Agence France-Presse (AFP) was present.
Paul Rafanoharana, a Franco-Malagasy former adviser to Malagasy President Andry Rajoelina, and Philippe François, a former colonel in the French army converted into business, were arrested in July 2021.
A trial in eight days
They were found guilty, after an eight-day trial in December 2021, of mounting an operation codenamed “Apollo 21” targeting Andry Rajoelina.
Paul Rafanoharana is considered the mastermind of the plot. He admitted during the trial to the existence of a letter in which he demanded a large sum of money for “guarantee the overthrow of the regime in place”. Philippe François, a former soldier from Saint-Cyr, is accused of having played accomplices in concealing the illegal activities of the “Apollo 21” project through a front company.
They were respectively sentenced to 20 and 10 years in prison with hard labor, for attempted coup and attempted assassination of the head of state.
A support committee launched in France
After the rejection of their appeal, their lawyers told AFP that they were studying the possibilities of extraditing their clients to France. “But this will require recognizing the Malagasy sentence and therefore recognizing that there was indeed an attempted coup”, explained one of them. Twenty people in total have been implicated in this case.
A support committee for Philippe François was set up in France in early August, chaired by the writer and former ambassador Jean-Christophe Rufin. In a press release, he called on the French government to ” protect “ the latter asking for his return to France.