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Any independent observer would also tell you that it took an equally violent Ouattara to commit those crimes that greeted the civil war. This one-sided justice would not wash. Let African leaders wake up to their responsibilities. Yesterday morning, a few hours after a specially charted plane from Abidjan had landed in The Hague at 4:00am local time (3:00am GMT), after a long flight from West Africa, the International Criminal Court charged former Ivorian head of state, Laurent Gbagbo with murder, rape, persecution and inhuman acts. According to the special prosecution, the crimes were allegedly committed, as the backers of the disgraced History Professor fought brutal battles to keep him in power, after he had lost last year�s presidential elections. According to Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Gbagbo, 66, is to account before the court for his individual responsibility in the attacks against civilians, committed by forces acting on his behalf. Moreno-Ocampo stressed in an official statement that both sides of the Ivorian political divide committed crimes in post election violence, and that his investigation was continuing. The later addition in the statement is obviously aimed at countering fears that the former President�s arrest could further stoke the tension in his home country, just returning to normalcy after the post election civil war. Moreno-Ocampo�s statement has done very little in calming down nerves in Abidjan, where Gbagbo�s supporters and many neutrals have already labeled Gbagbo�s trial the �Victors Justice.� In all, about 3,000 people are listed as dead from the post election violence, which also drove a large population into exile, mainly in Liberia and Ghana. Pro Gbagbo �Notre Voie�, the official newspaper of the ex-President�s Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) party, which usually publishes a colourful front page, had a black and white copy yesterday, according to information on the world-wide web. The paper had a screaming headline � Adieu Reconciliation � Farewell Reconciliation, alluding to the fact that with the skewed justice epitomized by presenting Gbagbo to the International Criminal Court, Reconciliation as a concept was dead in La Cote d�Ivoire. According to information gleaned on the internet, the Temps newspaper, controlled by Gbagbo�s second wife, Nady Bamba, called the extradition of the disgraced leader �The Shame.� Le Nouveau Courrier�s headline captured Gbagbo�s last word as he left Abidjan Airport � �Don�t Cry � Be Strong�. On the other side of the political divide, the Le Patriot newspaper of Allassane Ouattara�s Rally Republican Party screamed on its from page �GBAGBO -THE END.� A statement read on Ivorian National Television by State Prosecutor, Simplice Kaoudio, said the International Criminal Court had issued an arrest warrant for the fallen Ivorian leader last week, which was received in Abidjan on Tuesday, in the presence of Gbagbo�s lawyers. Human rights groups welcomed the arrest. But the haste with which Gbagbo was dispatched, while similar cases against the Ouattara forces remain uninvestigated, made many cautione against what they called �Victor�s Justice� �Victims of abuse meted out by forces loyal to President Ouattara also deserve justice done,� said Elsie Keppler of Human Rights Watch, quoted on BBC news. A report by Amnesty International on Ivory Coast, listed both sides as committing widespread violence. On one notorious occasion, said Amnesty International, a group of women who were demonstrating against Gbagbo clinging to power, were fired on by troops loyal to Gbagbo. �They suddenly opened fire on us,� eye witnesses told the London based human rights group. Six women and a baby, who was with her mother, were killed immediately. Several people were seriously injured in the attack, listed by Amnesty International in their official report on the Ivorian civil war. Amnesy reports that in March this year, Ouattara merged the military forces supporting him into the Republican Forces of Cote d�Ivoire. Detailed testimony in the Amnesty report says hundreds of men were systematically killed in Western Cote d�Ivoire by the FRCI and its militias in a campaign that started on March 28, in and around Duekoue. �They came into the yard and chased the women away. Then they told the men to line up and asked to state their first and second names, while showing their identity cards. Then they executed them,� one woman in Duekoue said of the FRCI and their dreaded militia � Dozos. According to various reports, when asked how far he was willing to prosecute his supporters implicated in post-election violence, President Ouattara responded. �I think the courts will do their job. First, we have to investigate. I�ve sent the prosecutor to conduct a national investigation, and we�ve asked the United Nations Human Rights Commission to come and make an investigation. If they say specific persons have committed crimes, they will be judged like anyone else.� When pressed that some of those who committed some of the most blatant atrocities were under the direct command of his Prime Minister, Mr. Ouattara said: �No no, let�s be clear, the Prime Minister has nothing to do with this. These crimes were allegedly committed in specific areas at specific times, so the Prime Minister has nothing to do with this.� A well informed observer of Ivorian politics puts it succinctly. �Ivorian politicians have a long history of avoiding the real issues facing the country. And that is dangerous because sooner or later these issues of Ivoirite and national identity could explode again.� The way and manner Gbagbo has been served to the wolves, with his partner in the Ivorian crime taking over the leadership of the country, is still polarizing Ivorian politics. An official report said a convoy of cars whisked the former Ivorian leader from the Airport to the court�s detention unit, close to the North Sea, after the overnight flight on Wednesday. Gbagbo is the sixth suspect taken into custody by the court, which is reported to have launched seven investigations in Africa. An official literature on the International Criminal Court says �investigations and trials of powerful leaders help strengthen the rule of law and sends a strong signal that such crisis will not be tolerated in a rights respecting society.� While this is a laudable aim of getting the world at peace with each other, one would want to understand why all those so far indicted, with the exception of a few from former Yugoslavia, are Africans. As you read this peace, there is an arrest warrant on the head of Sudanese Leader Omar Hassan Ahmad Al-Bashir. When George Walker Bush committed American troops on a virtual search and destroy operation in Iraq, during which thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians have been slaughtered, with the active connivance of then British Prime Minister Tony Blair, no one has called the two former leaders to order. As you read this peace, thousands have been slaughtered in Afghanistan by American troops and their allied forces. No one has indicted any of their leaders. Why should African leaders be canon fodder for testing global criminal justice system? Day in and day out, pictures of Israeli troops pounding defenceless Palestinean positions greet the viewer on television. Has anybody summoned Benjamin Nathanyahu or any other Israeli leader to account in The Hague? Africa certainly, has some of the most hopeless leaders on the planet. But that does not mean that other societies committing worse atrocities have a right to demand the heads of our leaders. The way the Ivorian leadership crisis has been allowed to pan out with the notion of the winner does no wrong: the loser is the only civilian, will come to haunt the rest of Africa. That is why the Dzi Wo Fie Asem mantra has to be jettisoned in favour of a collective effort to salvage what is remaining of the former West African economic power. Gbagbo behaved terribly after losing the elections. That is a fact nobody could discount. Any independent observer would also tell you that it took an equally violent Ouattara to commit those crimes that greeted the civil war. This one-sided justice would not wash. Let African leaders wake up to their responsibilities.