I.Coast Court Hands Life Term To Ex-warlord Over 2011 Massacre

A court in Abidjan on Thursday handed a life sentence to former warlord Amade Oueremi over March 2011 massacres in western Ivory Coast in which hundreds were killed

Abidjan, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 15th Apr, 2021 ) :A court in Abidjan on Thursday handed a life sentence to former warlord Amade Oueremi over March 2011 massacres in western Ivory Coast in which hundreds were killed.

Oueremi had faced 24 charges of mass murder, rape and inhumane and degrading treatment over the violence in Duekoue, which occurred as Ivory Coast was in the grip of a post-election civil war.

In estimates cited in the trial, the Red Cross said 817 people were killed on one day alone, while the United Nations put the toll at 300 dead.

The case brought forward searing testimony from survivors of the March 27-28, 2011, violence.

Duekoue, a hub for Ivory Coast's all-important cocoa industry, became one of the worst areas for bloodshed in a conflict sparked when then president Laurent Gbagbo refused to admit election defeat to rival Alassane Ouattara.

The months-long war ended in April 2011, at a cost of some 3,000 lives, when Gbagbo was seized.

He was later hauled off to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to face war-crimes charges, of which he was finally acquitted last month -- a move that supporters hope will lead to his imminent homecoming.

Pro-Ouattara forces seized Duekoue in March 2011 before militiamen allegedly under Oueremi's command carried out the massacres.

The violence played out against a background of ethnic tensions between the local pro-Gbagbo Guere community, pro-Ouattara Dioulas from northern Ivory Coast, and immigrants from neighbouring Burkina Faso.

Oueremi, 57, whose nickname was "The Lord", did not deny that massacres had taken place but dismissed accusations that he bore sole responsibility.

"I can't be the one who carries the can for the others. I was part of the FRCI," he told the court, referring to the forces that took the city.

"We were fighting Liberians and pro-Gbagbo militias who were sowing terror in the area... They killed us and we also killed them."