McApata: 21st Century Informania Arena

War crimes judges will rule Wednesday whether former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo can be released from prison for the rest of his trial on charges arising from deadly election violence that rocked his nation in 2010. Gbagbo, the first ex-head of state to be tried by the International Criminal Court, has appealed a March decision that he must stay behind bars in a UN detention centre until the end of the legal process. Both Gbagbo, now 72, and his former militia leader Charles Ble Goude, 45, have pleaded not guilty to four charges of crimes against humanity including murder, rape, and persecution in five months of bloodshed that wracked the Ivory Coast. About 3,000 people died in the turmoil that swept Abidjan — once one of Africa’s most cosmopolitan cities — in the aftermath of the November 2010 presidential polls that Gbagbo lost to bitter rival Alassane Ouattara. His highly divisive trial at the tribunal in The Hague opened in January 2016, and is set to last three to four ...