20110101
reuters

ABIDJAN/GENEVA (Reuters) - A senior United Nations official warned incumbent Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo and other senior officials on Friday they may be held criminally accountable for human rights violations.

A dispute between Gbagbo and rival candidate Alassane Ouattara over who won the presidential election on November 28 has plunged the West African state into turmoil and U.N. experts have reported killings, disappearances and arbitrary detentions.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said on Friday she had written to Gbagbo and other senior officials "to remind them ... that they will be held personally responsible and accountable for human rights violations resulting from their actions and/or omissions, according to international human rights and humanitarian law."

The international criminal justice system developed in the past 15 or so years had provided a means of accountability that did not exist before, she said in a statement issued in Geneva.

"No longer can heads of state, and other actors, be sure that they can commit atrocious violations and get away with it."

A Gbagbo spokesman said he could not immediately comment.

Gbagbo has defied almost unanimous pressure from world leaders to had over power to Ouattara, widely recognised to have won the election. Gbagbo's camp has rejected U.N.-certified electoral commission results that declared Ouattara winner, sparking a standoff in which scores of people have been killed.

In a New Year address broadcast on television late on Friday, Gbagbo accused world powers of an "attempted coup d'etat" by backing his rival. Continued...