Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara said he had offered a presidential pardon to his long-time rival Laurent Gbagbo as part of a reconciliation campaign with his predecessors ahead of the 2025 elections.
"In order to further strengthen social cohesion, I have signed a decree granting Laurent Gbagbo a presidential pardon," Ouattara said in a speech broadcast on television before Independence Day, which falls on Sunday.
He said he had also requested the unfreezing of Gbagbo's accounts and the payment of his presidential pension arrears.
Gbagbo, who was president of Ivory Coast from 2000 to 2011, returned to the country last year after the Hague court acquitted him in 2019 of war crimes charges for his role in a civil war sparked by his refusal to admit defeat after the 2010 elections.
Gbagbo still faces a 20-year prison sentence in Côte d'Ivoire for his 2019 conviction of stealing money from the Central Bank of Abidjan during the post-election period, and has always denied the charges.
This decision follows a rare meeting last July between Ouattara and Gbagbo and former President Henri Konan Bédier.
These three have dominated the divided political scene in Ivory Coast since the 1990s, and Bédier served as president from 1993 until he was ousted in a coup in 1999.
Ouattara's presidency has been relatively stable, but dozens of people have been killed in clashes that erupted around the 2020 elections when he ran for a third term that Gbagbo and Bédier said was unconstitutional.
The president has not yet indicated whether he intends to run for a fourth term in 2025, and has said he would like to step down, but also indicated that he wants Gbagbo and Bédier to commit to withdrawing from politics until he does so.