Cote d’ Ivories’ former first lady, Simone Gbagbo has been sentenced to 20 years in jail for her role in the violence that followed the 2010 elections that left nearly 3,000 dead.
Simone had been charged with undermining state security. She is accused for supporting her husband, Laurent Gbagbo in a bid to keep power after he was defeated in 2010 elections.
Laurent, former Ivorian president is awaiting trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Simone and her husband were arrested in 2011 in the main city, Abidjan where they had sought refuge.
She was born in a predominantly Christian south in 1949, she later studied linguistics and history before becoming a trade union activist.
In 1989 she was married to Laurent Gbagbo who became president of Ivory Coast since 2000 to 2011. She was the president of the Parliamentary Group of the Ivorian Popular Front and vice president of the FPI. She was the first lady of Ivory Coast before their arrest in 2011.
Gbagbo is said to have regularly mixed politics with the evangelical faith she practised after “miraculously” surviving a car crash and starting prayer meetings at the presidential palace.
