“According to the law, the judge who issued the arrest warrant cannot, by himself, cancel or withdraw the warrant,” an official from the Ouagadougou military court Norbert Koudougou said.
The declaration by Burkinabe judiciary comes after revelations that there was pressure from the government for suspension of the arrest warrant against Soro, after Burkinabe President Roch Marc Kabore met with his Cote d’Ivoire counterpart Alassane Ouattara in Addis Ababa to restore relations between the two countries.
Relations between Cote d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso deteriorated after the fall of Burkinabe’s ex-president Blaise Compaore’s regime in October 2014 and the issuance of an international arrest warrant by Ouagadougou against Soro for his involvement in the failed coup.
On several occasions, Ouattara had insisted that relations between his country and Burkina Faso had been normalized after talks with the latter’s president.
“It is up to Kabore to inform his Cote d’Ivoire counterpart that judicial matters should be handled by judicial institutions and not to try to derail the successes that were achieved after the 2014 popular uprising and last year’s failed coup under the cover of diplomacy,” wrote Balai Citoyen, a youth movement that led protests against Compaore’s regime.
Burkina Faso’s judges’ union equally issued a statement in which it said although it recognized the executive’s political power, the latter should not conduct its external relations in a manner that will harm the cardinal constitutional principles of separation of powers and judicial independence. Enditem
Source: Xinhua
