Tag: Laurent Gbagbo

Ivory Coast won’t transfer ex-First Lady to International Criminal Court

Simone Gbagbo
Simone Gbagbo

Ivory Coast said Friday it would not transfer former first lady Simone Gbagbo to the International Criminal Court in the Hague, but would try her at home instead.

The decision came 18 months after the ICC issued a warrant for her arrest over suspected crimes against humanity, charges which her husband and former president Laurent Gbagbo is also facing.

Ivory Coast’s cabinet decided to file a “motion to dismiss” the warrant. Her husband also awaits trial in The Hague over months of deadly violence that followed 2010 polls.

“The decision of the cabinet aims to have Mrs Gbagbo brought to trial… by Ivorian courts whose good reputation has been restored and which can hold a fair trial that will guarantee the rights of the defence,” said a government statement.

The government will inform the ICC of its decision shortly, the statement added.

Ivory Coast turned over Laurent Gbagbo to the ICC in late 2011 but now seems inclined to try other suspects in the 2010-11 unrest under its own jurisdiction.

“If we had the slightest doubt about the fairness of the Ivorian legal system, we would have extradited her to the Netherlands,” government spokesman Bruno Kone told AFP.

The former president’s Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) party welcomed the decision, expressing hope that it was “made with the sole aim of delivering… justice that is to the benefit of all.”

But the former first lady’s lawyer, Habiba Toure, expressed concerns about her client’s “arbitrary and unjustified detention.”

The lawyer said Simone Gbagbo was suffering from “serious health problems” and could not be treated properly under detention.

Simone Gbagbo was detained at Odienne in the country’s northwest after the post-election crisis caused by her husband’s refusal to acknowledge his defeat in the November 2010 presidential elections.

The post-poll violence left around 3,000 people dead in the west African country, which is the world’s number one cocoa producer.

The former first lady, who was born in 1949, is also under investigation for suspected genocide, harming state security and white-collar crimes.

Last month, an Abidjan court released on bail 14 close aides to Gbagbo, including his son Michel.

Gbagbo’s supporters accuse President Alassane Ouattara, the winner of the 2010 election, of carrying out “victor’s justice” as no one from his own camp has had to face prosecution.

Ivory Coast has become the second African country to refuse to cooperate with the ICC in just two weeks.

Kenyan lawmakers backed a motion on September 6 to pull out of the ICC, just ahead of the trial of Vice President William Ruto at the world court.

Ruto is on trial on three counts of crimes against humanity. He is accused of having organised 2007-2008 post-election unrest that killed at least 1,100 people and forced more than 600,000 people to flee their homes. – AFP

Ivory Coast reconciliation ‘at a dead end’

Ouattara's rebel army photographed in 2010
Ouattara’s rebel army photographed in 2010

by Christophe Koffi

A bid to reconcile hardened enemies in Ivory Coast has all but broken down, according to participants and observers, and time is running out for a commission set up to heal the wounds of bitter strife.

More than two years after a political and military crisis that claimed at least 3,000 lives in the west African country in the wake of disputed elections, statements by rival sides reveal their deep differences.

Yet the word “reconciliation” is still on many lips in political circles. Supporters of President Alassane Ouattara make it an article of faith. So do members of the opposition Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) of former president Laurent Gbagbo, who triggered the crisis by refusing to accept defeat at the polls in November 2010.

In an early July tour of the cocoa-rich north, his electoral stronghold, Ouattara urged the FPI to “ask pardon of the victims” of the bloodshed, which lasted from December 2010 to April 2011 in a country already weakened by civil war and partition.

The FPI this week curtly rejected the call to “repent”. Many in the party still consider Gbagbo their champion, though he is detained by the International Criminal Court in The Hague facing charges of crimes against humanity. His supporters argue that Ouattara’s side was to blame for the post-electoral violence.

Created by Ouattara in September 2011, a national Dialogue, Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CDVR) with a two-year mandate has endeavoured to resolve differences and has joined in the debate.

“In what happened to Ivory Coast, the wrongs are shared,” said the commission chairman, former prime minister Charles Konan Banny, closing a forum last week on the “profound causes” of a decade of hostilities.

“It’s up to all those who committed violations of human rights to acknowledge them and make an act of repentance,” he added, but the commission has less than three months to complete an enormous task.

Banny has indicated that he might ask for an extension of the commission’s mandate. “A time limit (is) not the best” of solutions, he told AFP, suggesting that two years are not enough for the work to be done.

Asked whether he would take up his post again if the mandate is prolonged, Banny evades the question. In political circles, many are speculating that the ex-premier might want to take up another challenge: the presidential election of 2015.

According to these observers, Banny may try to take control of his political party, the once all-powerful Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI), which has now become the main ally of Ouattara’s Rally of Republicans (RDR). The PDCI’s leading bodies are due for renewal in October.

‘A great national catharsis’

Now that the reconciliation commission is nearing the end of its mandate, politicians, diplomats, observers and non-governmental organisations are taking stock of its record, often with great severity.

“The CDVR is at a dead end,” says Rene Legre Hokou, the chairman of the Ivorian League of Human Rights, (LIDHO), arguing that the panel has kept a low profile and shown few concrete results.

The commission has for months promised public hearings across the country in which the “executioners” would directly confront their “victims”, but they have yet to begin. Many Ivorians eagerly await what Banny has termed a “great national catharsis”.

Under fire from its critics, some members of the panel complain of a lack of sufficient financial resources and also argue that their task is being complicated by political and legal interference.

In the most recent episode they cite, 84 people who were part of Gbagbo’s regime or close to it, including former first lady Simone Gbagbo, have been summoned before an assize court to answer for their suspected roles in the crisis of 2010-2011. However, the date for the hearing has not yet been set.

While for Ouattara, there can be no reconciliation without justice, Gbagbo supporters see the latest move by the judiciary as a new illustration of “conqueror’s justice”. Ivorian prosecutors have so far taken no steps to deal with serious crimes blamed on pro-Ouattara forces during the crisis.

Scant grounds exist for a resumption of talks between the government and the opposition FPI, which have been stalled for months. Yet such dialogue is essential to pave the way for the presidential election in two years’ time, with Ouattara already a candidate.

CDVR member Simeon Ahouana, the bishop of the central town of Bouake -long the stronghold of rebels involved in a 2002 coup bid against Gbagbo – has annnounced that he has “concerns” about the forthcoming poll.

LIDHO’s chairman Hokou is more blunt. In his eyes, if there is no progress in reconciliation by 2015, “we must fear that we’ll fall back into even worse violence”. – AFP