ABIDJIAN: Ivory Coast has sentenced a nurse to three years in jail for saying Africa would have been saved if President Alassane Ouattara had not been born.

The sentence comes months before the west African country’s presidential election at the end of October, with the opposition accusing Ouattara’s government of attempting to stifle dissent in the run-up.

Six youth leaders from the main opposition Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI) have been arrested since June over a social media post calling for mobilization against the government.

PDCI party leader Tidjane Thiam is among several prominent opposition figures to have been excluded from the October 25 vote.

Tokpa Flan Japhet, a 43-year-old nurse, “was tried and sentenced on July 18 to 36 months in prison” and fined $8,500 “despite his request for a pardon,” Abidjan’s public prosecutor Oumar Braman Kone said in a statement on Monday.

Japhet had in a Facebook post said if Ouattara’s mother had “had an abortion” she “would have saved Africa.”

“Neither repentance... nor a request for forgiveness has any effect on the reality of the offenses,” Kone said.

Another man, Moussa Diakate, was arrested after posting a video in which he “made death threats against supporters of a political group,” the prosecutor said.

Ivory Coast, a former beacon of stability in troubled west Africa, has repeatedly experienced violence during elections after the country’s first coup in 1999.

In late 2010 and early 2011, poll-related violence claimed some 3,000 lives after then-president Laurent Gbagbo refused to recognize Ouattara’s election victory.

Ouattara, 83, has not confirmed whether he will run for a fourth term, although he has been
tapped by his party to do so.