The International Criminal Court is due to rule this Wednesday, 31 March 2021, on the acquittals of former Ivorian President Laurent Gbabgo and former leader of the Young Patriots, Charles Blé Goudé. They were both acquitted, at first instance, in early 2019.
The two Ivorian personalities were prosecuted for crimes against humanity and war crimes, in the context of the violence committed between December 2010 and April 2011. These charges followed the announcement of the results of the presidential elections in favour of the current head of state, Alassane Ouattara.
This was refuted by the former Ivorian president’s lawyers, who insisted that the prosecutor did not have enough evidence to link the victims to the alleged incidents in this trial. Gbagbo’s counsel even questioned the independence and reliability of the forensic evidence presented by the prosecutor. The judges of the Pre-Trial Chamber had no choice but to acquit Gbagbo and Blé Goudé, notably because of an « exceptional weakness » in the prosecution’s case.
Since then, Laurent Gbagbo is in Belgium and can not return to Côte d’Ivoire, as Charles Blé Goudé who is in the Netherlands, both at the disposal of the International Criminal Court, which will have to make its decision this Wednesday, following the request of the office of the prosecutor to the Appeals Chamber to reclassify the decision taken in first instance, to conclude to a dismissal, denouncing « procedural flaws.
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