Ivory Coast to send ex-youth leader Ble Goude to ICC

Google – AFP, 20 March 2014

Charles Ble Goude, a militant youth leader and former Minister for Youth

 in the ousted Ivory Coast regime, is pictured on June 25, 2012 near the

Togo-Benin border (AFP/File)

Abidjan — Ivory Coast will transfer Charles Ble Goude, the jailed right-hand man of former president Laurent Gbagbo, to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, an official said Thursday.

The decision was made at a cabinet meeting, a source at the presidency told AFP. Gbagbo's former youth leader was arrested in Ghana more than a year ago and extradited to Ivory Coast.

In September last year, The Hague-based ICC unsealed a warrant for 42-year-old Ble Goude, who faces four counts of crimes against humanity over 2010-2011 post-election unrest.

The firebrand former leader of the "Young Patriots" will join his ex-boss in ICC detention, who was transferred to the Netherlands in late 2011.

Gbagbo also faces four counts of crimes against humanity but the court has yet to confirm the charges, pending further investigation.

The Ivorian crisis started with Gbagbo's refusal to concede defeat in November 2010 elections, sparking armed clashes that killed more than 3,000 people.

His election rival Alassane Ouattara, now the president, eventually ousted him thanks to international military backing.

Abidjan's decision to transfer Ble Goude can be seen as surprising given its prior refusal to do so with Gbagbo's wife Simone, also wanted by the ICC, on the grounds that its own judiciary now offered sufficient guarantees of a fair trial.

A man looks at the front pages of newspapers displaying a picture of Charles

 Ble Goude, a jailed relative of former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo, on

March 10, 2014 in Abidjan (AFP/File, Issouf Sanogo)

Gbagbo loyalists are still a force to be reckoned with in Ivorian politics and Ouattara had in recent months tried to foster reconciliation with gestures toward the opposition.

The leader of Gbagbo's FPI party, Pascal Affi N'Guessan, regretted the decision, arguing that it would not ease tensions.

"This does not show that the country is advancing on the path of normalisation, of some kind of way out of conflict," he said, but cautioned he would only make further comments when more is known about the planned transfer.

Ble Goude told AFP in an interview in 2012 that he was not afraid of going to the ICC.

"I am not an advocate of weapons, I never maintained a single militia. If the ICC wants to invite me for having organised protest marches, I have no problem appearing before the ICC," he said.

"I am ready to go before the ICC so that we may finally know in Ivory Coast who did what."

Ble Goude galvanised support for Gbagbo during the crisis with fiery speeches urging mass mobilisation against what he called pro-Ouattara "rebels" and their foreign backers, France and the UN.