Laurent Gbagbo

Koudou Laurent Gbagbo is an Ivorian politician who was the president of Côte d'Ivoire from 2000 until his arrest in April 2011. He was the first president in the history of the country that was a centre-left politician. A historian, Gbagbo was imprisoned in the early 1970s and again in the early 1990s, and he lived in exile in France during much of the 1980s as a result of his union activism. Gbagbo founded the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) in 1982 and ran unsuccessfully for president against Félix Houphouët-Boigny at the start of multi-party politics in 1990. He won a seat in the National Assembly of Côte d'Ivoire in 1990.