ICC upholds decision to try Côte d’Ivoire’s Simone Gbagbo
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The International Criminal Court has rejected Côte d’Ivoire appeal to try former first lady Simone Gbagbo at home, upholding a previous order to have her transferred to The Hague for prosecution.
The court said that the case against Gbagbo is admissible because Ivory Coast had not proved, at the time it challenged the case’s admissibility, that Ivorian authorities were investigating her for the same allegations as those she faces in The Hague.
ICC rejected the West African country’s request in December to put the former first lady in a local dock, reminding it of its “obligation to surrender her without delay.”
Abidjan appealed that decision and proceeded with a local trial, handing the wife of former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo a 20-year sentence in March, which she has appealed.
The ICC’s judges however said the Ivorian charges were vague and differed from those she faces before the Hague-based tribunal.
Simones’s husband and former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo is expected to go on trial on November 10, together with his right-hand man Ble Goude, facing crimes against humanity charges.
Gbagbo’s refusal to concede defeat after presidential polls in 2010 sparked post election violence in the country one of the world’s largest cocoa grower in which some 3,000 people died according to the United Nations.
He was eventually toppled in April 2011 by current President Alassane Ouattara’s forces backed by the UN and France.
