Ivory Coast 1956 Cover Opened For Inspection

Please see cover illustrated below:




The cover was posted in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, on 6 March 1956.

It appears to have been opened at the right, resealed with a plain white strip of paper and stamped with a two-line handstamp 'ABIDJAN' and a further two illegible words.

There is a manuscript annotion "Vu au controle", and initials or a signature.

My question is for what purpose would mail from Ivory Coast to Great Britain be opened and inspected in 1956?

A letter to the Palestine Section of the Colonial Office. That might have been a sensitive address.

Here is a bit of information on the sender:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial...m-hanna-saba

It could be something as simple as currency control.

France and the Ivory Coast was undergoing control changes at the time and perhaps there was concern about involving the British Government.

Thank you for the input everyone.

I am inclined to think that parcelpostguy is heading in the right direction with this.

And thank you cjd for the information on the addresser.

The cover was acquired as part of an accummulation of covers, all addressed to the Colonial Office (Palestine Section), which certainly sounds exotic and exciting, but from the nature of the addressers, following the end of the British Mandate in Palestine appears to have been responsible for pensions for those previously employed by the government. A large proportion of the covers were sent by employees of the Egyptian State Railways.

Most of the covers originate from Israel, Gaza (then occupied by Egypt), Egypt, Iraq, and a few outliers like this one, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iran, even Dominican Republic.

This cover is typical of the items in the lot.

Condition not brilliant, but scarce commercial usages.

Anything it possible, but my thought is that there have been frequent periods of unrest in the Ivory Coast over the decades. Ivory Coast was given its independence in 1960 and in the years leading up to it there were frequent demonstrations and demands for independence from France. It is possible that the sender of this cover could have been an activist who was being watched, or it could have simply been a particularly energetic time of protests against the French government. Sadly, the civil unrest and violence did not stop after independence and has continued off and on to the present.