Suspected mercenaries arrested in France told investigators they were plotting to assassinate Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo, French prosecutors said Wednesday.

Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo gestures during a news conference in Paris, in Jan. 26, 2003 file photo. Suspected mercenaries arrested in France told investigators they were plotting to assassinate Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo, French prosecutors said Aug 27, 2003.  [AP]

French officials have not given any details about the alleged plot, but two days before the arrests, Paris prosecutors opened an investigation into suspected terrorism- and mercenary-related activities, officials said.

The leading suspect, former army sergeant Ibrahim Coulibaly, has denied the charge. The prosecutors, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the group told investigators of the plot once they were arrested.

French counterintelligence agents arrested 10 people over the weekend, saying they were implicated in an alleged plot to destabilize Ivory Coast. An eleventh was detained Wednesday.

Six of the suspects are French citizens and four are Ivoirians. One, presented as the financiere of the group, is Lebanese, judicial officials said.

In Ivory Coast, word of the detentions came as tensions surged amid fears that civil war might erupt again, after it was declared over in July. The conflict began last September with a failed coup attempt in this former French colony. France has about 4,000 soldiers in Ivory Coast.

Ivorian military officials on Wednesday said they detained about 30 people, including soldiers, linked to the French arrests.

Living in exile in Burkina Faso since 2000, Coulibaly had recently announced his intention in the French media to return to Ivory Coast. He led a coup in 1999 but turned power over to Gen. Robert Guei rather than taking over himself.

France's top anti-terrorism judge, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, placed Coulibaly under investigation for "recruiting mercenaries with the intention of physically eliminating Mr. Gbagbo," French officials said. Coulibaly is now in custody.

Coulibaly's attorney, Sorin Margulis, said his client maintains that he "does not know" the people claiming that an assassination plot was in the works.

"He didn't recruit them," Margulis said.

Agents from France's counterintelligence service, known as the DST, arrested four of the men Saturday at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport as they were about to board a commercial flight for Abidjan, judicial officials said Monday.

Four other men were arrested in a Paris hotel at the same time. They were suspected of being financiers of the alleged plot, judicial officials said.

Two other suspects were arrested in the southeastern town of Orange on Saturday and Sunday and were to be brought before investigating judges at a different time, prosecutors said.

An eleventh person was arrested Wednesday morning in southern France.

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