Former President of Ivory Coast Laurent Gbagbo who lost elections in 2010 but refused to step down which engineered a political unrest in his country, is scheduled to go on trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in Hague on Thursday January 28th, 2016. The unrest claims the lives of over 3,000 citizens which Gbagbo the then sitting President allegedly refused to handover power and ordered his loyal forces to resist his ouster after his rival Alassan Wattara was declared a winner in a second round of voting.
Mr. Gbabo and at least one of his security chiefs faces four charges of crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, and persecution in his role in the disputed elections in the West African nation of Ivory Coast in 2010-2011. The former president is expected to plead not guilty to the charges according to his lawyer.
Chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda who is a native of the Gambia and the first female Chief Prosecutor of the ICC at Hague said Mr Gbagbo would be tried fairly and impartially. She said “”Our case is based on the law… and on the strength of the evidence our investigators have gathered”. Ms Bensouda’s work is really cut out for her in this case as this is yet another test of prosecuting an African Dictator who is allegedly accused of committing crimes against Humanity. Former President of Liberia Charles Taylor was also convicted by the same court on his role in the civil war in Liberia and neighboring Siera Leone in the late 1990s.
As it stands many African dictators including Gambia’s own Yahya Jammeh are wagging war against their citizens by imposing dictatorship and heavy handedness where many citizens are being killed including 14 students and 44 Ghanians killed in the Gambia in 2000 and 2005 respectively. In Burundi, Rwanda and Congo citizens are being killed as a result of their leaders changing their constitutions to run for a third term. Citizens have resisted these blatant power grab and several protesters have been massacred in the hands of security officials. The international community is closely watching these countries and it is feared that what happened in Ivory Coast will be repeated in these countries. The ICC would therefore be left with little option but to look into these cases as they prosecute Lauren Gbagbo of Ivory Coast for a similar crime.
Mr. Gbagbo was a former university professor who founded an opposition party well before Ivory Coast embraced multiparty democracy, he spent much of the 1980s in exile in France before returning to his country. He contested and lost the 1990 presidential elections and spent six months in jail in 1992 for his role in student protests. He came to power in 2000 in another disputed elections he himself described as unfair. He ruled his country for a decade before holding another election which he lost. In the 2010 race, Gbagbo placed first in the first round with 38 percent of the vote before losing to Ouattara in the runoff which he refused to acknowledge.
Laurent Gbagbo’s case is classic African leadership story where leaders tend to live above the law and uses government machinery to oppress citizens just to stay in power. Many leaders are sitting on a time bomb and have consistently committed heinous crimes against their citizens which could qualify as crime against humanity. The former President of Burkina Faso Blaise Campoare is also standing trial for the killing of former President Thomas Sankara and for his role in the uprising which drove him out of power 2015. One would think that the remaining African leaders like Yahya Jammeh would learn from those lessons and peacefully handover power. The irony is that the more they learn about these brutal downfalls of dictators in Africa, the more they clinch on to power. As a result Africa with its great potentials and vast resources have been set back by these leaders for decades.