Laurent Gbagbo, the former Ivory Coast leader cleared by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, launched a fierce attack Monday on the tribunal that put him on trial.
"The ICC, it's not serious, it had to eliminate an inconvenient man, an inconvenient competitor, so they put me there", he told journalists and local chiefs at his home village of Mama, in the southwest of the country.
"But I have no regrets, because if I had come back with the title of criminal, it's you all here who would were going to be ashamed," he added.
Gbagbo was speaking a day after his return to his home town on Sunday, when he got a hero's welcome from thousands of supporters.
He was able to return after having been definitively acquitted by the ICC on charges stemming from violence that claimed around 3,000 lives after he refused to concede electoral defeat in 2010 to current President Alassane Ouattara.
