Ivory Coast gears up for Laurent Gbagbo’s return

Former president’s return seen as test for country and population that still has 2011 bloody conflict fresh in memory.

Abidjan, Ivory Coast – Ivory Coast’s former President Laurent Gbagbo returns home on Thursday to help “reconcile” a country that he left in chaos almost 10 years ago. The opposition leader is due to fly back on a commercial flight from Brussels after judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague earlier this year confirmed his acquittal, as well as that of his youth minister Charles Ble Goude, of crimes against humanity. The two had been accused of instigating the post-election violence that engulfed Ivory Coast in 2011. The return is seen as a test for the country and a population that still has the bloody conflict fresh in memory, with some analysts saying there are concerns that it could again destabilise the world’s largest cocoa producer.