Ivorian ex-parliament speaker gets 20 years jail term

By Felix Tih

ANKARA (AA) - An Ivorian court has sentenced the country's former parliament speaker to 20 years in prison for corruption, local media reported.

Guillaume Soro, exiled in France since 2019, was tried in absentia.

Soro, 47, also a former prime minister and rebel leader, was found guilty of concealment and embezzlement of public funds and money laundering, during a hearing in the city of Abidjan in the absence of his lawyers.

He was also ordered to pay a sum of 4.5 billion CFA francs ($7 million).

Last week, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights ordered Ivory Coast to suspend its arrest warrant for Soro and to release 19 of his relatives who have been imprisoned for several months.

An arrest warrant was issued to Soro after he announced his candidacy for the presidential election on Oct. 31.

''I am still running for the presidency and I will win,'' Soro said in a Facebook post following the court sentence.

''I consider this verdict as a non-event,'' Soro added.

He was the prime minister in 2007-2012, and the speaker of the National Assembly in March 2012 and February 2019.

Soro also led a rebel movement against former President Laurent Gbagbo in a post-electoral violence in 2010-2011 that had resulted in the death of some 3,000 people, according to UN figures.

Gbagbo had refused to recognize his rival Alassane Ouattara's victory in the November 2010 presidential election.