ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast – The elected chair of this West individual commonwealth heralded "the daybreak of a newborn epoch of hope" when a bloody, four-month finish ended with the getting of his rival, the longtime strongman who lost the balloting but refused to wage up power.
Video of past President Laurent Gbagbo being led into a shack in a albescent undershirt was programme weekday on television as proof of his detention. He would not clew a evidence formally relinquishing noesis after losing a Nov. 28 election to economist Alassane Ouattara.
More than 1 meg civilians fled their homes and untold numbers were killed in the noesis struggle between the digit rivals that threatened to re-ignite a civil struggle in the world's maximal cocoa producer. Gbagbo's section forces hit been accused of using cannons, 60 mm mortars and 50-caliber machine guns to mow downbound opponents during the standoff.
"After more than quaternary months of post-electoral crisis, scarred by so some human lives lost, we are finally at the daybreak of a newborn epoch of hope," Ouattara said in an address to the commonwealth on broadcasting and television.
Ouattara cut brief reflection that Gbagbo would be delivered to the International Criminal Court at The Hague, occupation for an Ivorian enquiry into the past president, his spouse and their entourage.
"Every manoeuvre has been condemned to assure the physical integrity of Mr. Laurent Gbagbo, his spouse and every those arrested," he said. "They module receive dignified treatment and their rights module be respected."
Ouattara also said he witting to establish a actuality and equalisation authorisation and titled on every fighters to place downbound their arms.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon spoke to Outtara on weekday and said he due that with Gbagbo in custody, "any further murder module be avoided," UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said in a evidence late Monday.
Nesirky said that, at Gbagbo's request, the UN operation mission module wage section and protection while Mbagbo is in custody. He said Ban onerous to Ouattara "the need to ensure that there is no return against Mr. Mbagbo's supporters."
President Barack Obama welcomed Gbagbo's capture, occupation it a victory for the democratic module of the Ivorian people, who "have the quantity to begin to acquire their country, solidify their ism and build a spirited economy."
Gbagbo, who ruled the past land colony for a decade, was pulled from his burning act by Ouattara's personnel mass offend early in the day. The pro-Ouattara forces had received hold by land tanks and helicopters.
Residents of the advertizement top of metropolis refrained from celebrating in public, still fearful of the some brachiate fighters prowling the streets and refusing to believe their leader had been arrested. Sporadic shot echoed across the municipality weekday night.
Gbagbo, 65, could be unnatural to respond for his soldiers' crimes, modify though an planetary effort threatens to stoke the divisions that Ouattara module today hit to ameliorate as president.
Gbagbo's dramatic collar came after life of onerous offend in which land and U.N. helicopters fired rockets at blazonry depots around the municipality and targets within the statesmanly compound. Ouattara's test near began meet after land airstrikes ceased at around 3 a.m. Monday. A simultaneous land armored front secured super parts of the city, and pro-Ouattara personnel entered the statesmanly bilobed meet after midday.
"We attacked and unnatural in a conception of the bunker," Issard Soumahro, a pro-Ouattara plane at the scene, told The Associated Press.
He additional that Gbagbo was bushed and had been slapped by a soldier, but was not otherwise hurt.
Another pro-Ouattara fighter, Yaya Toure, said the attack was "hard in the beginning but we got up our spirit to enter" the residence.
Gbagbo "tried to carelessness by the lagoon," Toure said, adding that the land forces in helicopters "cut soured his carelessness route, so he came back to his residence."
"Then in the residence, we went in and took him," he said. "It wasn't the whites (the French) who took him — it was us."
Other pro-Ouattara soldiers wore a few smiles, but mostly the men continuing to centre on parcel the municipality of brachiate gangs.
Witnesses at the nearby Golf Hotel said Gbagbo was brought in with his wife, son and most 50 members of his entourage.
"The nightmare is over for the grouping of Ivory Coast," Youssoufou Bamba, appointed by Ouattara as the country's U.N. ambassador, said in New York. Bamba proclaimed that Gbagbo module be brought to justice.
In the Hesperian municipality of Duekoue, pro-Ouattara forces fired into the expose in jubilation, panicking refugees who fled in every directions or lapse to the ground in terror. In villages easterly of Duekoue, grouping danced in the streets, gesture tree branches. In digit village, teen men paraded with the orange, albescent and naif Ivorian flag.
"This is an end of a chapter that should never hit been," Ban said. "We hit to help them to change stability, rule of law, and address every helper and section issues."
Ouattara's diplomatist to France, Ali Coulibaly, told France-Info broadcasting that Gbagbo "must respond for the crimes against humans that he committed."
Some critics of Gbagbo had accused him of clinging to noesis in conception to avoid continuation by the International Criminal Court.
Ivan Simonovic, assistant secretary-general for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, told reporters that teams from his obligation saw the bodies of around 400 grouping modify before the gesture of hostility that culminated in Gbagbo's arrest.
The U.N. rights official says he discussed the grandness of stuff the section vacuum with Ouattara, 69, and his ministers during a visit to the land terminal week.
Ouattara has titled for police to convey to their posts, for every Ivorians to refrain from political reprisals, and announced severe punishment for those who retaliate, Simonovic said.
"I conceive it is essential to break the wheel of impunity and retaliation," Simonovic said. "If after the offend in 2002 we had ingrained actuality and accountability, perhaps we would hit prevented what has happened now."
Geoffrey Robertson, a British-based human rights attorney and past chair of U.N. special suite for Sierra Leone, said Gbagbo should be transferred to The Hague for enquiry for launching an attack on the U.N. obligation in Ivory Coast and against the civilians that the U.N. was protecting.
Richard Downie, an continent expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it module be arduous for Ivory Coast to place Gbagbo on trial, adding that it would "probably be a lightning handgun for more unrest."
Ouattara "didn't poverty to become to noesis this way, through the barrel of a gun," Downie said. "He was elected evenhandedly and freely. But this is the status he was dealt. It's feat to be unbelievably arduous for him to bring the land together."
Ivory Coast was separated into a rebel-controlled north and a loyalist south by a 2002-2003 civil struggle and was officially reunited in a 2007 peace deal. The long-delayed statesmanly election was witting to bring together the commonwealth but instead unleashed months of violence.
Gbagbo already had overstayed his dominion by fivesome years when he titled the fall election and won 46 percent of the flow vote. When the country's election authorisation and planetary observers proclaimed on Dec. 2 that he lost the balloting, he refused to travel down.
The past history professor defied near-universal planetary pressure to assistance over noesis to Ouattara. The digit ordered up nonconvergent administrations that vied for curb of the onetime West individual scheme powerhouse.
Ouattara drew his hold from the U.N. and world powers. Gbagbo serviceable his hold over the country's expeditionary and section forces who carried discover a crusade of terror, kidnapping, killing and raping opponents.
Gbagbo wrapped himself in the country's alarum as he took the oath of obligation at his inauguration.
"No digit has the correct to call on external armies to assail his country," Gbagbo proclaimed in a TV address on Dec. 31. "Our large obligation to our land is to defend it from external attack."
Ivory Coast gained independence from author in 1960, and whatever 20,000 land citizens lived there when the civil struggle poor out.
French personnel were then presented the task by the U.N. of monitoring a cease-fire and protecting external nationals in Ivory Coast, which was once an scheme star but colourless low Gbagbo.
Since late March, thousands of land and external nationals in metropolis were evacuated by land tanks and helicopters to an grey base on the edge of the city, where a refugee camp was ordered up for the privileged. Regular Ivorians were not permissible at the camp, and some ran discover of matter and water, forcing famished grouping onto the streets during the fighting.
Gbagbo had described efforts against him as equal to a external coup d'etat.
The land polity sought to indifference itself from Gbagbo's arrest.
"France intervened at the letter of the United Nations secretary-general to weaken the onerous weapons that Gbagbo was using against the noncombatant accumulation and against (U.N. peacekeepers)," said land Foreign Minister Alain Juppe. "After that, it was the Ivory Coast republican forces, including Mr. Ouattara's troops, who entered the statesmanly act and inactive Mr. Gbagbo."
Other West individual nations had considered expeditionary participation to vanish Gbagbo, but those efforts never materialized. Sanctions imposed on Gbagbo and his inner lot by the U.S. and dweller Union failed to dislodge him.
While the U.N. passed resolutions allowing its peacekeepers to intervene to protect civilians, anti-Gbagbo neighborhoods in metropolis continuing to be pummeled with mortar shells. So some grouping were killed that the topical morgue had to stack corpses on the floor.
Ouattara proven to assert his authority from the Golf Hotel, fortified by U.N. peacekeepers, and imposed an embargo on cocoa exports in a bid to strangle Gbagbo financially. In a desperation, Gbagbo seized curb of external banks in metropolis — prompting their grace and a liquidity crunch.
In the heartland of Gbagbo's Bete tribe, grouping were subdued. A small group of diversion youths in the community of Karriere loud expletives most Gbagbo and chanted, "They fished Gbagbo discover of his hole."
Other grouping repeated Ouattara's initials over and over, vocalizing "A.D.O. is our president!"
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Associated Press writers Michelle Faul in Duekoue, Ivory Coast; Rukmini Callimachi in Indianapolis; Anita Powell in Johannesburg, South Africa; Anita Snow at the United Nations; Angela Charlton, Sophie Tetrel, Cecile Brisson and Julien Proult in Paris; and photographer Rebecca Blackwell in metropolis contributed to this report.
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