Ivory Coast president pardons former first lady

Simone Gbagbo, the former Ivory Coast first lady, who is serving a 20-year jail term, will be freed today after Alassane Ouattara, the country’s president, granted her an amnesty.

The wife of Laurent Gbagbo, the former president, has spent seven years behind bars for her part in a wave of political violence that claimed several thousand lives in 2010-11.

The amnesty was announced on the eve of independence day, for Gbagbo and around 800 other prisoners.