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The Ivory Coast strongman is forced to bow to the inevitable four months after losing elections There was to be no suicide pill, no bullet in the brain, no heroic martyrdom. Instead, it is claimed, there was a humiliating slap on the cheek. Laurent Gbagbo came blinking into the sunlight on Monday with the look of an actor hearing his applause turn to jeers. The fall of the African strongman came after one of the most drawn-out election results in history. Gbagbo was forced to bow to the inevitable and leave his power base in Ivory Coast four months after the votes were cast against him. Backed by French tanks, forces loyal to Gbagbo’s arch rival, Alassane Ouattara, said they stormed his underground bunker at the presidential residence in Abidjan, interrogating Gbagbo then carrying him away with his wife Simone and son Michel. “We attacked and forced in a part of the bunker,” Issard Soumahro, a pro-Ouattara soldier at the scene, told the Associated Press. “He was there with his wife and his son. He wasn’t hurt, but he was tired and his cheek was swollen from where a soldier had slapped him.” The 65-year-old former history professor, who once dismissed the beheading of France’s Louis XVI as public “ebullience”, could be seen wearing a military flak jacket and was flanked by two soldiers. His son, Michel, was beaten and bleeding, according to an Ouattara spokesman. Gbagbo was then reportedly taken to meet his nemesis at the city’s Golf hotel, where Ouattara’s government-in-waiting has been encamped under UN protection since Gbagbo’s intransigence plunged the country back into civil war. The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, hailed the decisive blow, saying that dictators should take notice that “they may not disregard the voice of their own people in free and fair elections.” The British foreign secretary, William Hague, called for Gbagbo to be treated with respect and tried in an orderly manner. After months of diplomatic stalemate and two weeks of military defiance, it took one last big push to force Gbagbo out of his bunker. And it was clear that foreign intervention had played a decisive role in breaking the deadlock. On Sunday night, French and UN helicopter gunships pounded Gbagbo’s residence for the second time, claiming they were taking out heavy weapons that had been used against both the UN and civilians. Then on Monday morning a convoy of 25 French military vehicles, including tanks and armoured personnel carriers, set off in the same direction. But Ouattara’s forces claimed they carried out the final offensive alone. Gbagbo’s camp claimed he was taken by French special forces. The French, repeatedly accused by Gbagbo of plotting a coup in their former colony, vehemently denied this. Major Frederic Daguillon, a French military spokesman, insisted they were responding to attacks against civilians. “We deployed along the strategic axis,” he said. “One of these was a road that led to the presence of Mr Gbagbo. “Mr Gbagbo was arrested by the Ivorian forces. Not one French soldier was in the residence of Mr Gbagbo. Mr Gbagbo was arrested by Ivorian forces, not French.” What happens next to Gbagbo, once a firebrand Marxist lecturer, is not yet clear. Officials at the Golf hotel were said to be waiting for him to sign a document that formally hands power over to Ouattara. TV footage showed Gbagbo in a white sleeveless undershirt, and then donning a colourful print shirt. Apollinaire Yapi, a spokesman for Ouattara’s military commander Guillaume Soro, said: “He’ll stay at the Golf hotel for now, and will be handed over to the UN or French, but his ultimate destination is justice.” The international criminal court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has begun preliminary examination of possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ivory Coast, including accusations levelled against pro-Ouattara forces. On Monday night there were celebrations in pro-Ouattara neighbourhoods where people shot into the air. But in other areas French troops were stoned by angry pro-Gbagbo youths. It remained unclear whether, denied their martyr, Gbagbo’s supporters would launch a backlash or melt back into the population. He won 46% of the vote in the election. With youth militias still roaming, the potential for chaos and a counter-insurgency is evident. But Youssoufou Bamba, Ivory Coast’s ambassador to the UN, predicted the fighting would stop. “The nightmare is over for the people of Ivory Coast,” he said. In western Ivory Coast, rebels fired into the air in jubilation in Duekoue, causing a panic among refugees who fled in all directions or dropped to the ground in terror. In villages going east from Duekoue people danced in the streets, waving tree branches. In one village, young men paraded with the orange, white and green Ivorian flag. “It’s a victory … considering all the evil that Laurent Gbagbo inflicted on Ivory Coast,” Ouattara’s ambassador to France, Ali Coulibaly, told France-Info radio. He emphasised that the man in power for a decade would be “treated with humanity”. Coulibaly added: “We must not in any way make a royal gift to Laurent Gbagbo in making him a martyr. He must be alive and he must answer for the crimes against humanity that he committed.” The power struggle in Ivory Coast has cost an estimated 1,500 lives, though the real figure is probably much higher, and displaced a million people from Abidjan alone. Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, said: “This is an end of a chapter that should never have been. We have to help them to restore stability, rule of law, and address all humanitarian and security issues.” He said Gbagbo’s “physical safety should be ensured and I’m going to urge that”. Daniel Bekely, the Africa director of Human Rights Watch, said: “Laurent Gbagbo has been credibly implicated in crimes against humanity and other atrocities for which he should be held to account. He should not be granted a golden exile in a country that would shield him from national or international prosecution.” Laurent Gbagbo Ivory Coast Alassane Ouattara David Smith guardian.co.uk