They are being grilled on the 2010-2011 post-electoral crises that almost crippled the country.

New trials began for loyalists of former President of Côte d'Ivoire Laurent Gbagbo on Tuesday June 9, 2015 in the capital, Abidjan, Africatimes reports. Jean-Noël Abéhi, a top security agent of the former Head of State, the reports say, is among those being grilled.

They are said to be held in relations to the 2010-2011 post-electoral crises that almost crippled the country. This is notably for either ‘abandoning the country in crisis or for complicity.’ Jean-Noël Abéhi who led the biggest gendarmerie camp in the country in the days of Laurent Gbagbo, for instance, is tried for running out of the country during the post-electoral skirmishes that left over 3,000 people dead. The top military official took refuge in Ghana where he was arrested in 2013 and sent back to his country of origin.  

A total of seven military officials are expected to be grilled by the military tribunal with risk of bagging between three years or life imprisonments. Their trial comes weeks after the International Criminal Court rejected Côte d’Ivoire’s appeal to try former first lady Simone Gbagbo at home, upholding a previous order to have her transferred to The Hague for prosecution.

Gbagbo’s refusal to concede defeat after presidential polls in 2010 and which sparked a bloody stand-off in the world’s largest cocoa grower in which some 3,000 people died according to the United Nations, is behind all the court cases in Côte d’Ivoire. Gbagbo was transferred to the ICC’s detention unit in The Hague in November 2011 but Simone Gbagbo was thrown in jail at home. Since then, the Ivorian government has repeatedly refused to hand her over to the ICC, where she too is wanted for crimes against humanity. The former Head of State was eventually toppled in April 2011 by current President Alassane Ouattara.