Born in 1949 in Moossou, Grand-Bassam as Simone Ehivet, the daughter of Jean Ehivet, a local police officer, and Marie Djaha, Simone Gbagbo trained as a historian and earned a third cycle doctorate in oral literature. She worked in applied linguistics as a Marxist labor union leader and been nicknamed in the Ivorian press as the "Hillary Clinton des tropiques". The mother of five daughters, the last two with her current husband, Laurent Gbagbo,[2] she participated in the teachers' strike movement of 1982. Simone and Laurent Gbagbo, before their marriage, co-founded the clandestine political group which later became known as the FPI. She was an active trades union militant back in the 1970s, she was imprisoned several times during the struggle for multi-party elections.
Following the introduction of multiparty elections, Gbagbo and her husband were arrested for allegedly inciting violence in February 1992 and spent six months in prison. In 1996, she became an FPI Deputy from Abobo (part of Abidjan) in the National Assembly. In 1998, she became an evangelical Christian after surviving a car accident.
[3][4]
Re-elected to the National Assembly as an FPI Deputy from Abobo in the December 2000 parliamentary election,[1] Gbagbo is also President of the FPI Parliamentary Group.[5] At the FPI's Third Extraordinary Congress, held from 20 to 22 July 2001,[6] she was elected as the Second Vice-President of the FPI.[7]
Controversy
Simone Gbagbo is a controversial figure in Côte d'Ivoire. Involved in nationalist politics surrounding the Ivorian Civil War, in 2005 Radio France International reported that she was being investigated by the United Nations for human rights abuses, including organising death squads.[8]
The Kieffer Affair
In July 2008 she was formally called for questioning by a French investigative judge, examining the April 2004 disappearance and presumed death in Abidjan of French-Canadian journalist Guy-André Kieffer.[9] Kieffer was in Abidjan at the time, researching a story on political corruption and government involvement in the Ivorian Cocoa industry. He was last seen on the way to a meeting with Michel Legré, the brother-in-law of Simone Gbagbo. French judicial officials have arrested and are investigating Jean-Tony Oulaï, a former member of the Ivorian Secret Services, whom they detained in Paris in 2006.[10] Jean-Tony Oulaï's driver at the time Berté Seydou, as well as Kieffer's brother, have alleged that Mrs. Gbagbo and former Ivorian Minister of Planning and Development Paul-Antoine Bohoun Bouabré have knowledge of the events surrounding Kieffer's death, and that Oulaï is responsible.[11][12][13][14][15][excessive citations]
Legré was arrested in Abidjan in 2004 on suspicion of kidnapping and murder, but was provisionally released in 2005 and has since fled the country—or is in an unknown location.[16] In April 2009, Simone Gbagbo was interviewed by two French magistrates concerning the Kieffer case.[17] The AFP reported that the magistrates consider Legré, who they have in custody, their "chief suspect" and that neither the President nor Gbagbo "are suspected of being directly linked with Kieffer's disappearance."[18] The French also planned interviews with Gbagbo's security chief Seka Yapo Anselme and Planning Minister Paul-Antoine Bohoun Bouabre.[19] She filed a defamation lawsuit against Jean-Tony Oulaï regarding his charges against her.[18]
Political activity since 2008
In September 2008, Gbagbo engaged in a two-week tour of the central part of the country, concluding the tour on 14 September in the city of Bouaké. She rallied support for her husband's candidacy in the forthcoming presidential election during this tour and urged participation in the voter identification process.[20]
On 22 November 2012, a warrant was unsealed by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Simone Gbagbo's arrest for crimes against humanity. The Court alleged that as a member of her husband's inner circle, she "played a central role in post-election violence".[22]Amnesty International called on the Ivorian government to immediately transfer her to the custody of the ICC.[23] The government refused to do so, and Gbagbo was judged by an Ivorian court.
On 10 March 2015, Simone Gbagbo was sentenced to 20 years in jail for crimes against humanity.[24] Two years later, in March 2017, she was acquitted by Ivorian court of war crimes and crimes against humanity charges, connected to her role in the 2011 political violence.[25][26] She was pardoned under an amnesty by Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara on 7 August 2018 after serving 3 of her 20-year sentence. The amnesty was a general one and included other members of her party.[27]
On November 30, 2024, she was designated as the candidate of her party, the Movement of Capable Generations (MGC), for the nomination for the 2025 presidential election.[28]
References
Notes
^ ab"List of FPI deputies". Archived from the original on 19 December 2007. Retrieved 17 July 2020., National Assembly website (2007 archive page) (in French).
Italics and (*) indicate that a person was convicted by the ICC and that the conviction remains valid; a name in (parentheses) indicates that charges were dropped or a conviction was overturned; † indicates a person confirmed by the ICC as deceased before or during trial; (x) after a name indicates that the case was closed by the ICC because of a national-level trial of the accused
