Côte d’Ivoire’s former prime minister, GUILLAUME SORO who was sentenced to life in prison for undermining national security, on Sunday said he was ending his self-imposed exile that began in 2019.
SORO was previously the right-hand man to President ALASSANE OUTTARA but the pair fell out in 2019, with the head of state accusing him of fomenting a civilian and military insurrection.
SORO then went into exile, and an Ivorian court sentenced him in absentia to life imprisonment in 2021.
SORO in an address published on his social media handle announced that he is putting an end to his exile because it’s hard for me to live far from his ancestral and native land of Africa.
SORO said an attempted arrest against him was made at Istanbul airport on November 3, in a bid to extradite him to Côte d’Ivoire.
SORO was head of an insurgency that controlled the northern half of Côte d’Ivoire in the early 2000s.
He provided crucial military support to OUATTARA in his tussle with the then president, LAURENT GBAGBO, who was ousted in 2011 after a brutal post-election conflict.
SORO then became OUATTARA’s first prime minister and in 2012 was named speaker of the National Assembly.
SORO was also sentenced in April 2020 to 20 years’ jail for handling embezzled public funds.