Religious leaders, the minister of justice and other assorted dignitaries emerge one by one from behind the black tarpaulin. Some gaze expressionlessly ahead. Others' grim faces betray the morbid spectacle they have just witnessed inside. Many wear surgical masks. Two years earlier, four young men were executed outside the nearby turquoise and white mosque. The conflict that flared after Cote d'lvoire's presidential election in November 2010, when the incumbent, Laurent Gbagbo, refused to concede defeat at the polls to the challenger, Alassane Ouat-tara, had reached a murderous climax in Yopougon, a district of Abidjan, the commercial capital. The four were guarding the local mosque, where members of the district's besieged Muslim community had taken refuge.
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