Despite facing two criminal convictions, former Ivory Coast Prime Minister Guillaume Soro, who went into exile in 2019, announces plans to return home.
On Sunday, he expressed his desire to return, citing the difficulty of “to live far from my ancestral… land of Africa”.
He further expressed his intention to “contribute to the reconciliation” of the country.
In 2021, an Ivorian court sentenced Soro to life imprisonment in absentia for charges related to undermining national security.
The year prior, he received a 20-year sentence on charges related to the embezzlement of public funds.
Both convictions occurred during Soro’s self-imposed exile, which commenced in December 2019.
However, on Sunday, Soro asserted on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, that he was “guilty of no crime.”
He further mentioned that there was an attempted arrest against him at an airport in Turkey on November 3, with the aim of extraditing him to Ivory Coast.
While Soro did not provide a specific date for his return, he had previously announced in May that he planned to run in Ivory Coast’s 2025 presidential elections.
His attempt to run for president in the 2020 elections was thwarted by a Constitutional Court ruling.
Soro, a former leader of a rebel group active in northern Ivory Coast in the early 2000s, was once a crucial ally of the current President, Alassane Ouattara.
During a power struggle against then-President Laurent Gbagbo following a dispute over the 2010 election results, Soro offered military support to Mr. Ouattara. This conflict escalated into a brief civil war that resulted in the deaths of nearly 3,000 people.
It ended when Mr Gbagbo was captured in April 2011.
Soro subsequently assumed the roles of prime minister and national assembly speaker under President Ouattara.
However, their relationship deteriorated in 2019 when President Ouattara accused Soro of fomenting a “civilian and military insurrection,” resulting in Soro’s exile.
