Ivory Coast’s former president Laurent Gbagbo has filed for divorce on Monday from his wife of three decades, days after his highly anticipated return to the country.
Gbagbo’s lawyer Claude Mentenon said in a statement that after years of “rejected requests for Simone Ehivet to consent to an amicable separation”, the ex-president had asked an Abidjan court for a divorce.
The announcement comes four days after Gbagbo returned to Ivory Coast following a decade’s absence, during which he was tried at The Hague for crimes against humanity during the post-election conflict of 2010-11.
Simone was arrested alongside her husband in April 2011 and sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment in Ivory Coast for “violating state security”, after Gbagbo refused to concede defeat, sparking a conflict that left some 3,000 people dead.
