Gbagbo’s return could be complicated by an outstanding 20-year sentence given to him in absentia in November 2019 by an Ivorian court for misappropriating funds from the regional central bank.

In April President Alassane Ouattara said Gbango was free to return from the Hague but did not say whether Gbagbo had been pardoned.

Assoa Adou, the leader of a pro-Gbagbo party, announced the date of the former President’s home-coming in front of a crowd that had come to celebrate Gbagbo’s birthday in Abidjan.

Gbagbo, who turned 76 on Monday, served as president from 2000 until his arrest in 2011, after his refusal to concede electoral defeat to Ouattara. Post-election violence spiralled into a civil war that claimed the lives of 3,000 people.

On March 31 the ICC upheld a 2019 decision which ruled prosecutors had failed to present enough evidence to prove their case against Gbagbo and Charles Ble Goude, a former youth leader and one of his aides. (Reporting by Ange Aboa; writing by Hereward Holland)