Gbagbo

Let’s recall the facts: in 2000, Laurent Gbagbo was elected president of Côte d’Ivoire.

The first head of state in history to be prosecuted by the ICC was Laurent Gbagbo, fourth President of Côte d’Ivoire, in 2011.

File photo of former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo taken at a press conference in Abidjan, Ivory Coast on August 22, 2023.

Gbagbo and Ble Goude were allowed to leave the court’s custody pending the outcome of the appeals.

Gbagbo, the former president, is living in Belgium while ICC prosecutors appeal his acquittal, was struck from the electoral list and refused a passport.

Ouattara, has blasted attempts by Gbagbo and Soro to contest the presidential election as "provocation" and said one of them belongs behind bars.

Ouattara was the internationally recognized winner of a disputed 2010 election in which then-President Laurent Gbagbo refused to concede defeat.

Rights groups documented atrocities by both sides during that war, which deepened divisions between the country's marginalised and mainly Muslim north, where Ouattara is from, and the largely Christian south, where Gbagbo drew a lot of his support.

This agreement includes Bédié's PDCI and Gbagbo's FPI, and movements led by former prime minister and national assembly speaker Guillaume Soro and former minister and youth leader Charles Blé Goudé.

Celebrations erupted outside the court and Gbagbo’s daughter said he plans an emotional homecoming to the Ivory Coast, after seven years in detention.

Today, Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court acquitted former Côte d’Ivoire president Laurent Gbagbo and Charles Blé Goudé, his former youth minister.

What was Mr Gbagbo accused of?

IF Dictator Biya attempt to cling to power after his credible and compelling defeat, he will surely end up like Gbagbo at the ICC.

Simone Gbagbo waves as she arrives at court in Abidjan in 2016.

After popular unrest Laurent Gbagbo became president and was sworn in on 26 October 2000.

After the inauguration of Gbagbo, Ouattara—who was recognized as the winner by most countries and the United Nations—organized an alternative inauguration.

Early in November 2004, after the peace agreement had effectively collapsed following the rebels' refusal to disarm, Gbagbo ordered airstrikes against the rebels.

Following a public uprising that resulted in around 180 deaths, Guéï was swiftly replaced by Gbagbo.

Gbagbo had ordered air strikes on Ivorian rebels.

Guéï allowed elections to be held the following year, but when these were won by Laurent Gbagbo he at first refused to accept his defeat.