* Mercenaries recruited by President Gbagbo:

Guéï allowed elections to be held the following year, but when these were won by Laurent Gbagbo he at first refused to accept his defeat.

Côte d ' Ivoire is now divided between the rebel leader Guillaume Soro and president Laurent Gbagbo who has blocked the diplomatic advances made in Marcoussis and Accra — of the laws related to political reforms promised by Gbagbo in Accra, only two out of ten have been voted on so far.

After northern candidate Alassane Ouattara was declared the victor of the 2010 Ivorian presidential election by the country's Independent Electoral Commission ( CEI ), the President of the Constitutional Council – an ally of Gbagbo – declared the results to be invalid and that Gbagbo was the winner.

In the October 2000 elections, Guéï was defeated by Laurent Gbagbo of the Ivorian Popular Front, but he refused to recognize the result and it took a spate of street protests to bring Gbagbo to power.

After a short period of civil conflict, Gbagbo was arrested by the The French Forces " Licorne ", then detained for several months in a town, in the north of the country, the city is called Korhogo.

With the late October deadline approaching in 2006, it was regarded as very unlikely that the election would in fact be held by that point, and the opposition and the rebels rejected the possibility of another term extension for Gbagbo.

Gbagbo is mainly supported by the largely Christian south ; his opponents are mostly concentrated in the Muslim north.

When Nigeria demanded Gbagbo step down and the EU began imposing sanctions and freezing assets, Gbagbo demanded foreign troops ( by which he meant UN and French troops ) leave the country.

Leaders of the Forces Nouvelles ( former rebels ) asserted that Gbagbo was not the Head of State and could not make such a request and also asserted that the demand was a part of a plan to commit genocide on ethnicities from the north of the country, as stated by Gbagbo's Minister of Youth and Employment.

Gbagbo was held in the Golf Hotel by Ouattara's forces, but the UN police had accepted his request for their protection.

Initial reports indicated that French special forces had made the arrest, based on declarations by a Gbagbo aide, but it was denied by the French ambassador in Côte d ' Ivoire.

But there have been persistent reports from Alain Toussaint, Gbagbo's Special Advisor in France, that French forces did indeed make the arrest possible namely by blasting open the corridor that linked the presidential residence to the French embassy in Abidjan, enabling pro-Outtara forces to move in quickly to seize Gbagbo.

Following the overthrow of the Gbagbo regime in April 2011 by forces loyal to Alassane Ouattara backed by French and UN forces, N ' Guessan was arrested and held at a detention centre in Bouna, north-east Ivory Coast.

" " Despite allegations of human rights abuses, McEwen still supports Gbagbo, calling the current crisis ' a coup in progress ' by Gbagbo's opponents.

FPI was founded in exile in 1982 by history professor Laurent Gbagbo during the one-party rule of President Félix Houphouët-Boigny.

Coulibaly was again implicated and fled to Burkina Faso, where he and other opponents of the Gbagbo government were sheltered by regional rival Blaise Compaore.

After the March 2011 offensive by forces loyal to Ouattara reached the capital and deposed Gbagbo, the Ivorian Armed Forces siding with Ouattara and Guillaume Soro ( the Republican Forces of Côte d ' Ivoire ) began operations to disarm militias on both sides, including Coulibaly.

Finally, however, after popular unrest Laurent Gbagbo became president and was sworn in on 26 October 2000.

Gbagbo had ordered air strikes on Ivorian rebels.

But street protests forced him to step down, and Gbagbo became president on October 26, 2000.

Ouattara's forces arrested Gbagbo at his residence on 11 April 2011.

At the FPI's 3rd Ordinary Congress on 9 – 11 July 1999, Gbagbo was chosen as the FPI's candidate for the October 2000 presidential election.

Gbagbo installed himself as President on 26 October.

Gbagbo visited the north for the first time since the outbreak of the war for a disarmament ceremony, the " peace flame ", on 30 July 2007.

It was reported that Gbagbo was arrested on the afternoon of 11 April 2011.

Gbagbo was arrested in Korhogo, where he had been placed under house arrest, and was placed on a flight to The Hague on 29 November 2011 without knowing where he was led to.

Eyadéma's funeral was held on 13 March 2005, in the presence of a number of Presidents and other international dignitaries ; Presidents Mathieu Kérékou of Benin, John Kufuor of Ghana, Laurent Gbagbo of Côte d ' Ivoire, Mamadou Tandja of Niger and Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria attended the ceremony.

Gbagbo, however, refused to step down, touching off a major political crisis that only ended with Gbagbo's capture on 11 April 2011.

Wodié stepped down as head of the PIT in 2011, but Ouattara then appointed him as President of the Constitutional Council on 25 July 2011 ; Wodié was appointed to replace Paul Yao N ' Dre, a loyalist of Ouattara's ousted opponent Laurent Gbagbo.

Although strongly opposed to president Gbagbo's management of the ongoing crisis, his dissertation was dedicated to President Gbagbo and the Ivorian First lady who both suffered the shock and the pain of witnessing the massacre of ivorians, including children and women, on their own soil by French troops.

On 6 April 2011, forces loyal to Ouattara moved to seize Gbagbo at his residence in Abidjan after failed negotiations to end the presidential succession crisis.

Later speaking from inside the Golf Hotel in Abidjan, Gbagbo told the regular armies to stop fighting.

Based in the Abidjan neighborhood of Abobo, the militia calling itself The Invisible Commandos led a series of surprise raids against forces loyal to Laurent Gbagbo.

There were three candidates for the presidency: Tiémoko, Amara Karamoko ( president of the unit of University of Abidjan ) and Laurent Gbagbo.

* The Young Patriots: nationalist groups aligned with President Laurent Gbagbo

In the November 1990 parliamentary election, Gbagbo won a seat in the National Assembly, along with eight other members of the FPI ; Gbagbo was elected to a seat from Ouragahio District in Gagnoa Department and was President of the FPI Parliamentary Group from 1990 to 1995.

In 2010, Côte d ' Ivoire had a presidential election that saw Gbagbo face off with Alassane Ouattara.

The Constitutional Council concluded that without these votes Gbagbo won with 51 % of the remaining vote.

Gbagbo declared that " I will continue to work with all the countries of the world, but I will never give up our sovereignty.

Gbagbo had the tunnel blocked with concrete as soon as he came to power in 2000, marking his political independence to France, the former colonial master.

The ICC formally issued an arrest warrant for Gbagbo, charging him with four counts of crimes against humanity – murder, rape and other forms of sexual violence, persecution and " other inhuman acts ", allegedly committed between 16 December 2010 and 12 April 2011, although many supporters allege that it is not true.

On June 23, 2001, Laurent Gbagbo, who had been elected President in the 2000 election, met with Bédié in Paris and urged him to return to Côte d ' Ivoire.

A second coup, following 2000 elections that made Laurent Gbagbo President, saw Coulibaly in a leadership position, after which he came into conflict with fellow military leader Guillaume Soro.

On March 10, 2008, a trial of Coulibaly, involving his alleged plot to seize power and kill Gbagbo with mercenaries in 2003, began in Paris.

", even in Côte d ' Ivoire where, beyond the provocations of Laurent Gbagbo, elected with less than 15 % of the polls, the vast majority of people feel no resentment towards the French, nor the huge number of Franco-Ivorian citizens, and few towards the former colonizing power, their main target being rather the rests of paternalism of the French political attitude in Black Africa, leading to political tensions from time to time.

Upon her election to office, Sirleaf made her first foreign trip as President to neighboring Côte d ' Ivoire, meeting with Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo in an attempt to repair relations between the two countries following Côte d ' Ivoire's support of the Movement for Democracy in Liberia during the Second Liberian Civil War.