Will the deal for the presidential election scheduled for next October in Côte d'Ivoire change? The question may arise when the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced Thursday to allow former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo to leave Belgium. He has been under house arrest since his acquittal in 2019 of crimes against humanity.
His party awaits his return
However, the victory was not total for Laurent Gbagbo. The judges rejected the request for unconditional freedom presented by the former Ivorian head of state. Thus, any country he wishes to go to must in particular agree to receive it beforehand, said a spokesman for the Court of The Hague. This therefore makes it doubtful for the moment that he will return to Côte d'Ivoire, where the party he founded, the Front populaire ivoirien (FPI), is preparing for the next elections.
The time is for the moment to the satisfaction for the supporters of Laurent Gbagbo. "We are happy, it was important that these restrictions be lifted," reacted Franck Anderson Kouassi, spokesperson for the FPI. "We are now awaiting the date of his return to the country. We will welcome him. ” For the former Ivorian president Henri Konan Bédié, leader of the Democratic Party of Côte d'Ivoire (PDCI), the main opposition movement with which the FPI concluded an agreement for the presidential and legislative elections, for his part estimated that this decision is "a moment of happiness for the majority of Ivorians".
More than seven years of detention
After more than seven years in detention in The Hague, Laurent Gbagbo was found not guilty in January 2019 of crimes committed between 2010 and 2011 during the post-electoral violence in Côte d'Ivoire, which left some 3,000 dead in five month. The former president and his co-accused Charles Blé Goudé, former head of the Young Ivorian Patriots, were released in February of the same year under conditions, including the obligation to reside in an ICC member state willing to receive them pending trial on appeal.
Laurent Gbagbo, 74, has since lived in Brussels, while Charles Blé Goudé, 48, stayed in The Hague. The latter, interviewed during the night of Thursday to Friday and also concerned by the court decision, said he was "happy to regain his freedom of movement", adding that "the path to justice and truth is long and slow " It must be said that the Ivorian justice is still waiting to get their hands on these two former leaders of the country. At the beginning of November 2019, the Ivorian justice thus sentenced Laurent Gbagbo on appeal in absentia to 20 years in prison for the "robbery" of the Central Bank of West African States. A month later, Charles Blé Goudé received the same sentence, also in absentia, for crimes committed in the context of the 2010-2011 crisis.
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