Laurent Gbagbo

Koudou Laurent Gbagbo (Gagnoa Bété: Gbagbo ; ; born 31 May 1945) is an Ivorian politician who was the president of Côte d'Ivoire from 2000 until his arrest in April 2011.

Laurent Gbagbo was born on 31 May 1945 to a Roman Catholic family of the Bété people in Gagnoa in the then French West Africa.

He became a history professor and an opponent of the regime of President Félix Houphouët-Boigny.

A historian, Gbagbo was imprisoned in the early 1970s and again in the early 1990s, and he lived in exile in France during much of the 1980s as a result of his union activism.

He was imprisoned from 31 March 1971 to January 1973.

In 1979, he obtained his doctorate at Paris Diderot University.

In 1980, he became Director of the Institute of History, Art, and African Archeology at the University of Abidjan.

Gbagbo founded the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) in 1982 and ran unsuccessfully for president against Félix Houphouët-Boigny at the start of multi-party politics in 1990.

He participated in a 1982 teachers' strike as a member of the National Trade Union of Research and Higher Education.

Gbagbo went into exile in France.

During the 1982 strike, Koudou Gbagbo formed what would become the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI).

He returned to Côte d'Ivoire on 13 September 1988 and at the FPI's constitutive congress, held on 19–20 November 1988, he was elected as the party's Secretary-General.

He won a seat in the National Assembly of Côte d'Ivoire in 1990.

Following the introduction of multiparty politics in 1990, Gbagbo challenged Houphouët-Boigny in the October 1990 presidential election.

Gbagbo contended that Houphouët-Boigny, who was either 85 or 90 years old (depending on the source), was not likely to survive a seventh five-year term.

This failed to resonate with voters, and Gbagbo officially received 18.3% of the vote against Houphouët-Boigny.

In the November 1990 parliamentary election, Gbagbo won a seat in the National Assembly, along with eight other members of the FPI.

Gbagbo was elected to a seat from Ouragahio District in Gagnoa Department and was President of the FPI Parliamentary Group from 1990 to 1995.

In 1992 he was sentenced to two years in prison and charged with inciting violence, but was released later in the year.

The FPI boycotted the 1995 presidential election.

In 1996 Gbagbo was re-elected to his seat in the National Assembly from Ouragahio, following a delay in the holding of the election there, and in the same year he was elected as President of the FPI.

At the FPI's 3rd Ordinary Congress on 9–11 July 1999, Gbagbo was chosen as the FPI's candidate for the October 2000 presidential election.

That election took place after a December 1999 coup in which retired general Robert Guéï took power.

Guéï refused to allow his predecessor as president, Henri Konan Bédié, or former prime minister Alassane Ouattara to run, leaving Gbagbo as the only significant opposition candidate.

Gbagbo claimed victory after Robert Guéï, head of a military junta, barred other leading politicians from running in the October 2000 presidential election.

The Ivorian people took to the streets, toppling Guéï.

Gbagbo was then installed as president.

Guéï claimed victory in the election, held on 22 October 2000.

However, after it emerged that Gbagbo had actually won by a significant margin, street protests forced Guéï to flee the capital.

Gbagbo said in July 2008 that he had received crucial support from Blaise Compaoré, formerly the President of Burkina Faso, while he was part of the underground opposition to Houphouët-Boigny.

In the 2010 presidential election, Alassane Ouattara defeated Gbagbo, and was recognized as the winner by election observers, the international community, the African Union (AU), and the Economic Community of West African States.

However, Gbagbo refused to step down, despite mounting international pressure.

The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) announced that Ouattara had won the race with 54% of the vote, a tally that the United Nations concluded was credible; however, the Constitutional Council, a body dominated by pro-Gbagbo members, annulled the results in Ouattara's electoral strongholds in the north, claiming fraud, and declared Gbagbo the winner with 51% of the vote.

In December 2010, both Gbagbo and Ouattara assumed the presidency, triggering a short period of civil conflict in which about 3,000 people were killed.

Gbagbo was arrested in 2011 by pro-Ouattara forces, who were supported by French troops.

Gbagbo was extradited to The Hague in November 2011, where he was charged with four counts of crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court (ICC) in connection with the post-election violence.

Gbagbo was the first former head of state to be taken into the court's custody.

In January 2019, an ICC panel dismissed the charges against Gbagbo and one of his former ministers, Charles Blé Goudé, determining that the evidence presented was insufficient to prove that the pair committed crimes against humanity.

Prosecutors appealed the decision, and Gbagbo was prohibited from returning to Côte d'Ivoire pending the appeal proceedings.

The ICC ultimately upheld Gbagbo's acquittal, and in April 2021, Ouattara stated he and Blé Goudé were free to return to the country.