Laurent Gbagbo’s trials

Seven years after being dragged before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged crimes against humanity, former Ivoirian leader Laurent Gbagbo briefly set sight last week on the high road to freedom. But he slipped on a last-ditch appeal by prosecutors to have him kept behind bars pending appellate trial.

Judges at The Hague had on Tuesday acquitted the ex-president and ordered his immediate release because the prosecution failed to prove charges that he masterminded murder, gang rape, persecution and other inhumane acts during the 2010-2011 post-election violence that wracked his country. Following that poll, which was held on 28^th November 2010, Gbagbo had refused to cede power to Alassane Ouattara, the current president who was believed to have won. A brutal civil war then ensued, in which some 3,000 people died and 500,000 got displaced.  

Gbagbo was prised out of presidential palace bunker and captured along with his wife, Simone, on 11^th April 2011 after French troops and United Nations (UN) peacekeepers backed up assaulting pro-Ouattara forces. He was held under house arrest for seven months before his extradition to face international justice. Simone was kept back, however, to face trial in Cote d’Ivoire.

The ICC on Tuesday ruled that there was no need for further arguments by the defence “as the prosecutor has not satisfied the burden of proof” on the charges filed. It ordered immediate release of the ex-president and henchman Charles Blé Goudé, nicknamed Gbagbo’s “Street General,” who was standing trial along with his former boss.

But prosecutors on Wednesday challenged Gbagbo’s pending freedom, arguing that he could abscond and might not show up in court if his acquittal were to be overturned on appeal. He was consequently retained in ICC custody until appellate proceedings that will commence in February.

Gbagbo’s faltering case at the ICC has raised fresh doubts about the relevance of that institution in delivering international justice to state actors accused of mass atrocities, who may not readily fit in for trial by their own country’s judicial system. In 2014, the court’s prosecutor dropped charges of crimes against humanity against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta. Some time later, his deputy, William Ruto, as well got off the hook. And last year, former Congolese Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba was acquitted on appeal over crimes allegedly committed by his militia in the Central African Republic in 2002-2003. As the first former head of state to stand trial before the court, Gbagbo was a glittering trophy for its prosecutors. But his slipping through, at least for now at the trial stage, suggests the court’s prosecution may simply be inadequate for the task of holding top guns to account.

The acquittal of Gbagbo by the ICC last week elicited bitter protests by his opponents, especially victims of the 2010-2011 violence in Cote d’Ivoire. But it as well sparked jubilant celebrations by his supporters.

‘There is no sure remedy after-the-fact for ruinous injuries…in maddening moments of nationhood. The only certain remedy is to altogether avoid going the heady road of ruination’

What is our business, you may ask, in 2019 election season Nigeria with the ‘trials of Brother Gbagbo?’ Well, it is this moral: there is no sure remedy after-the-fact for ruinous injuries a people may incur on themselves in maddening moments of nationhood. The only certain remedy is to altogether avoid going the heady road of ruination, no matter how compelling inducements may be to the contrary.

The 2010 election in Cote d’Ivoire was meant to unite that country after an impunitous civil war in the early 20s that split the world’s largest cocoa producer between the north and south. Although Gbagbo had won the first round by a narrow margin, he lost the run-off to his bitter rival, Ouattara, but he refused to accept defeat and led the country into another round of civil war. Frontline watchdog, the Human Rights Watch (HRW), argued that a major problem was: principal actors in the impunities of the 2002 civil war were not called to account, and they later emerged lead players in the 2010-2011 violence by which the country again morphed into killing fields. The rights group detailed the atrocities of the post-election rage in a 2011 report from which I surmise as follows.

With Gbagbo having refused to accept defeat in the run-off poll, a targeted campaign of violence by forces loyal to him evolved into an armed conflict in which they faced off combat troops loyal to Ouattara. That conflict was largely waged along political, ethnic and religious lines. According to HRW, elite security forces linked to Gbagbo dragged Ouattara supporters away from restaurants or out of their homes into waiting vehicles, only for family members to later find the victims’ bodies in morgues, riddled with bullets. “Women who were active in mobilising voters – or who merely wore pro-Ouattara t-shirts – were targeted and often gang-raped by armed forces and militia groups under Gbagbo’s control, after which the attackers told the women to ‘go tell Alassane’ their problems. Pro-Gbagbo militiamen stopped hundreds of real and perceived supporters of Ouattara at checkpoints or attacked them in their neighborhoods and then beat them to death with bricks, executed them by gunshot at point-blank range, or burned them alive,” the group said in its report.

Pro-Ouattara combat troops, who came to be known as Republican Forces, matched up with similar impunities when they launched an offensive in March 2011 to take over the country. “In Duékoué, the Republican Forces and allied militias massacred hundreds of people, pulling men they alleged to be pro-Gbagbo militiamen out of their homes and executing them unarmed. Later, during the military campaign to take over and consolidate control of Abidjan, the Republican Forces again executed scores of men from ethnic groups aligned to Gbagbo – at times in detention sites – and tortured others…Human Rights Watch found that armed forces on both sides committed war crimes and likely crimes against humanity…” the group reported.

There has been some clamour that Ivoirian justice since the end of the post-election conflict has been ‘the victor’s justice,’ because Ouattara supporters were not substantially brought to book for their own atrocities. But the whole crisis had in the first place stemmed from Gbagbo’s poor electoral sportsmanship. And so, when Republican Forces swept into Abidjan in March 2011 to seize control, civilians came in direct line of hostilities, prompting the UN Security Council to authorise a peacekeeping force “to use all necessary means … to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence.” It was with that mandate that UN peacekeepers and French forces attacked the presidential palace on 11^th April and arrested Gbagbo along with his wife and a number of other allies, following which he was delivered to the ICC.

But in acquitting the ex-president last Tuesday, the court ruled that prosecutors failed to demonstrate “the existence of a common plan” to keep him in power that included crimes against civilians. The court also held that prosecution as well “failed to demonstrate that public speeches by Mr. Gbagbo constituted ordering or inducing the alleged crimes.”

The experience of Cote d’Ivoire – just like that of Kenya, among others – showed that responsibility to stave off ruinous tendencies of nationhood largely reposes with followers who must stay stubbornly restrained, and not necessarily with political leaders who may be recklessly inciting in their desperation for power. That is one lesson that must be applied to differing intensities of acrimony in political contestation, even here in our country Nigeria. If the combat troops and militias in Cote d’Ivoire had resisted incitement to arms by power hounds, for instance, there wouldn’t have been such humongous toll in the post-election conflict, of which the suspected instigator now seems set to walk free!