Colonel 'covered up murder'

[emad]

(Filed: 21/01/2006)

Three French military captains testified that a colonel based in Ivory Coast tried to cover up the murder of a civilian by French peacekeepers there, judicial officials said yesterday.

The three claimed that Col Eric Burgaud also congratulated his men when they told him of the death of Firmin Mahe, suffocated to death with a plastic bag inside a French armoured vehicle in May, the officials said.

The peacekeepers apparently believed that Mr Mahe was a gang leader suspected of rapes and murders in the region.

The investigation of the killing and its subsequent cover-up has shaken the French military at the highest levels. Gen Henri Poncet, who led French peacekeepers in the West African nation at the time, was put under investigation in the case for "complicity in murder".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/01/21/wfrance21.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/01/21/ixworld.html