Ivory Coast’s former first lady Simone Gbagbo is freed on amnesty, to the horror of rights groups

Former Ivory Coast first lady Simone Gbagbo, who had been serving a 20-year jail term, was released on Wednesday, two days after being granted amnesty by President Alassane Ouattara.

After seven years in detention, Gbagbo returned to her home in an upmarket district of Abidjan to be greeted by around 1,000 supporters.

The 69-year-old wife of former president Laurent Gbagbo was convicted over political violence that claimed several thousand lives in 2010-11.

“The old page is turned,” she told activists outside her home. “Get ready for a new page.”

On Monday – the eve of the Ivory Coast’s independence day – Ouattara announced an amnesty for Gbagbo and around 800 others in the name of national reconciliation.

She had been implicated in the 2011 shelling of a market in an Abidjan district that supported Ouattara and for belonging to a “crisis cell” that allegedly coordinated attacks by the armed forces and militias in support of her husband.