\n Charles Ble Goude, a former right-hand man to Ivory Coast's ex-president Laurent Gbagbo, on Monday called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to help him return to the country following his acquittal.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"It is your duty to see that I return to Ivory Coast. You have the authority, you have the power, you have the duty,\" he said in a speech to ICC judges.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ble Goude and Gbagbo were both acquitted by the Hague-based court in March of charges arising from post-election violence in Ivory Coast in 2011.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ble Goude's call for assistance to enable him to go home follows a demand he made in September for compensation from the ICC.\n<\/p>\n
\n The West African nation was plunged into deadly violence after Gbagbo refused to accept defeat in the 2010 presidential elections.\n<\/p>\n
\n The ensuing conflict claimed more than 3,000 lives and more than 200,000 people fled the country.\n<\/p>\n
\n After he was ousted, Gbagbo was flown to The Hague to face charges of crimes against humanity, of which he was eventually acquitted.\n<\/p>\n
\n Ble Goude, now 49, was acquitted on the same charges.\n<\/p>\n
\n Gbagbo has since returned home from Europe and met with his erstwhile rival, President Alassane Ouattara.\n<\/p>\n
\n But Ble Goude, who says he was the victim of a \"serious and manifest miscarriage of justice,\" is currently without a passport.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"When I was acquitted, I was happy because for me it was the end of an ordeal, but I was very wrong. My ordeal continues today and continues,\" Ble Goude said in his statement to the ICC judges, which was passed on to AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Today, citizen Ble Goude has become a stateless person,\" he added.\n<\/p>\n
\n In July he was invited into the Ivorian embassy in The Hague to start the procedure to apply for a new passport.\n<\/p>\n
\n Both Gbagbo and Ble Goude have been sentenced in absentia in Ivory Coast to 20 years in prison for crimes related to the deadly violence.\n<\/p>\n
\n While the government in Abidjan has hinted that Gbagbo's sentence will be dropped, it has not said anything about Charles Ble Goude's prison term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Charles Ble Goude, a former right-hand man to Ivory Coast's ex-president Laurent Gbagbo, on Monday called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to help him return to the country following his acquittal. \"It is your duty to see that I return to Ivory Coast. You have the authority, you have the power, you have the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-85501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n