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his besieged rival, incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo in Abidjan yesterday at the climax of a deadly months-long crisis.
Gbagbo, who has held power since 2000 and stubbornly refused to admit defeat in November’s presidential election, was detained and taken to his rival’s temporary hotel headquarters, with his wife Simone and son Michel.
“The nightmare is over,” Ouattara’s prime minister, former rebel leader Guillaume Soro, said on the victorious camp’s television channel, also calling for forces still loyal to Gbagbo to change sides.
“There can be no witch hunts, join the Republican Forces,” Soro said.
“After fierce fighting, surrounded and defeated, Gbagbo and his wife Simone Gbagbo have just surrendered and are now under arrest,” he added, calling on Ivorians to remain calm and saying a lawless Abidjan would soon be secured.
The network showed footage of Gbagbo inside a room in the Golf Hotel along with several senior aides, wearing a vest, wiping himself down with a towel and then changing shirts. He appeared visibly tired but otherwise unharmed.
Ouattara spokeswoman Anne Ouloto told AFP the former first couple had been brought to the Golf Hotel, where Ouattara’s camp was for months besieged by Gbagbo’s forces, at around 1:00 pm shortly after the arrest.
Speaking in New York, Cote d’lvoire’s UN envoy Youssoufou Bamba vowed that Gbagbo would now stand trial.
“Mr Gbagbo was arrested, he is alive and well and he will be brought to justice for the crimes he has committed,”Bamba said, adding that only Ivorian forces were involved in his detention.
UN peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said Gbagbo and his wife were under the protection of UN police at the Golf Hotel amid fears of reprisals or summary justice.
“UN gendarmes are now ensuring the security of Mr Gbagbo and his wife in an apartment in the Golf Hotel,” Le Roy said. “To my knowledge most of the fighting has stopped but there are pockets of resistance.”
Earlier, witnesses reported seeing pro-Ouattara forces entering Gbagbo’s besieged residential compound, from which they had been repeatedly repulsed, while French and UN armoured vehicles deployed on a road nearby.
Troops from the cocoa-rich nation’s former colonial ruler France and from a UN peacekeeping force have been pounding Gbagbo’s forces since Sunday in a bid to destroy the heavy weapons they were reportedly using against civilians. – AFP.