Former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo arrives for the start of his trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, today.
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Four months of civil war swept Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cocoa grower, in early 2011, after Gbagbo refused to step down despite losing elections in late 2010.
The African Union says it does not condone impunity and is following the Ivory Coast’s ex-President Laurent Gbagbo’s case at the International Criminal Court. This high-profile trial will test the ability of the ICC to obtain reliable evidence from a country in which the government has a political interest in securing a guilty verdict.
“Nothing would be allowed to defeat Mr Gbagbo, and if politics failed, violence was seen as politics by other means”.
Campaign of violence ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told the court that when Mr Gbagbo saw that he was going to lose the presidency, “he began a campaign of violence against those he considered his opponents”, including Muslims and other ethnic groups he assumed supported Mr Ouattara.
In one case 38 women attending a pro-Ouattara rally were raped, and at least 20 people where killed in the shelling of a market.
Mr Gbagbo was arrested in 2011 after refusing to acknowledge his victorious rival, Alassane Ouattara, following an election the previous year.
Ms Bensouda said she would call 138 witnesses including victims of violence and members of Gbagbo’s inner circle to testify about his alleged involvement in plotting the post-election violence even before the 2010 vote.
Gbagbo was “confidently” approaching his day in court because he “wants the truth, the entire truth, the whole truth to be told, so that the people of the Ivory Coast can take ownership of their own history”.
The gallery was packed with rowdy supporters, many of them Ivorians who had travelled to The Hague from Paris. “For instance the ICC asked for the extradition of Simone Gbagbo, but Ivory Coast went ahead to sentence her”, Michel Gbagbo said.
As a result, fighting broke out between pro-Ouattara forces and those loyal to Gbagbo in December 2010 and stretched over the following four months until Gbagbo’s arrest. Its last attempt to press charges against a top politician, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, ended in disarray amid fierce diplomatic lobbying by Kenya and its African allies. Under Mr Gbagbo, many northerners were not allowed to vote, while Mr Ouattara was banned from standing for election until 2010.
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Gbagbo’s defence denies there was an organised plan and insists the former trade unionist played a key role in installing a multi-party system in his nation – a regional powerhouse once held up as a beacon of democracy. He spent time in prison for “subversive teaching” in the 1970s, and again for student activism in the 1990s, and founded the centre-left Ivorian Popular Front in 1982.
