Gbagbo captured, urges supporters to surrender

[TGD]

AFTER more than four months' standoff, defiant Cote d'Ivoire ruler, Laurent Gbagbo, has been detained.

The self-declared president had refused to give up power after his rival, Alassane Ouattara, was named the winner of last year's presidential election.

A Gbagbo adviser in France, Toussaint Alain, told the Voice of America (VOA) that French special forces detained Gbagbo at his Abidjan residence yesterday.

"It's a victory ... considering all the evil that Laurent Gbagbo inflicted on Ivory Coast," Ouattara's ambassador to France, Ali Coulibaly, said on France-Info radio. He emphasized that the man in power for a decade would be "treated with humanity."

"We must not in any way make a royal gift to Laurent Gbagbo in making him a martyr," Coulibaly said.    "He must be alive and he must answer for the crimes against humanity that he committed."

Cote d'Ivoire was divided into a rebel-controlled north and a loyalist south by a 2002-2003 civil war. The country was officially reunited in a 2007 peace deal. The long-delayed presidential election was intended to help reunify the nation but instead unleashed months of violence.

Some critics had accused Gbagbo of clinging to power in part to avoid prosecution by the International Criminal Court.  ICC prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has begun preliminary examination of possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Cote d'Ivoire, including accusations levelled against forces seeking to install Ouattara.

Source: Gbagbo captured, urges supporters to surrender