Paul Rafanoharana, former Franco-Malgache Advisor to the Head of State, and Philippe François, ex-colonel of the French army, have been imprisoned since July 2021.
Le Monde
The request of two French people, recognized as guilty of having wanted to assassinate the president of Madagascar, to cancel their conviction to ten and twenty years of forced labor was rejected Friday August 26 by the Malagasy Court of Cassation, at the end of an expeditious audience where the France-Presse agency was present.
Paul Rafanoharana, a Franco-Malgache former adviser to Malagasy President Andry Rajoelina, and Philippe François, ex-colonel of the French army converted to business, had been arrested in July 2021.
trials in eight days
They were found guilty, after eight days of trial in December, to have set up an operation responding to the code name “Apollo 21” targeting Andry Rajoelina.
Paul Rafanoharana is considered the brain of the plot. He admitted during the trial the existence of a letter in which he claimed a large sum of money to “guarantee the reversal of the regime in place”. Philippe François, former military of Saint-Cyr is accused of having played the accomplices by hiding the illegal activities of the “Apollo 21” project through a screen company.
They were respectively sentenced to sentences of twenty and ten years in prison with forced labor, for attempted coup and attempted assassination on the head of state.
A support committee launched in France
After the rejection of their appeal, their lawyers declared to AFP studying the extradition possibilities of their customers to France. “But that will require recognizing the Malagasy sentence and therefore recognizing that there has been an attempted coup,” said one of them. Twenty people in total were implicated in this case.
A support committee for Philippe François was formed in France in early August, chaired by the writer and former ambassador Jean-Christophe Ruffin. He called in a statement the French government to “protect” the latter by asking for his return to France.