Still removed from the electoral list three months before the local elections, Laurent Gbagbo tabled on Thursday, June 8, 2023 an appeal to the Independent Electoral Commission. Acquitted by the ICC of crimes against humanity committed during the 2010-2011 post-election crisis, he remains under a 20-year prison sentence in Côte d’Ivoire for the “robbery” of the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) in 2011. Pardoned by the presidency, but not granted amnesty, he is still deprived of his civil rights.
Laurent Gbagbo visited the office of the Abidjan Independent Electoral Commission in a small committee. The PPA-CI activists had been ordered not to move, and respected it.
The former president personally signed his appeal to the CIS. Before going out to make a statement to the press. He went back on his conviction by the Ivorian courts in the case of the BCEAO’s “robbery” in 2011, an accusation he says he “strongly refutes”.
I don’t know why I was judged. No one summoned me because in order to have a trial, the accused is summoned and given a summons where he resides. Everyone in the world knows where I was living at the time of this trial. I was at the ICC!”
Laurent Gbagbo ended his speech with a call for peace. “The time for the blows is over,” he argued, before urging Henri Konan Bédié and Alassane Ouattara to work together to “leave the younger generations a peaceful Ivory Coast.” But he won’t give up his civil rights, he promised, concluding, “I won’t let my name get dirty without a fight.”
