After around half a year in captivity, 46 Ivorian soldiers returned home to their county’s capital Abidjan Saturday after being pardoned and freed by their Malian captors.
President Alassane Ouattara greeted the freed soldiers at the airport before promising “normal relations with the brother country of Mali”.
The soldiers had been sentenced to 20 years in prison after being arrested in July in the Malian capital Bamako, accused of being mercenaries despite their insistence they were part of a UN peacekeeping mission.