I read with emotion the words of Mr Nicolas Sarkozy, former President of the French Republic, as he was about to enter the doors of a prison.
These words resonate within me, because I too have experienced the cold walls of detention.
I experienced the long nights of questioning, the accusatory looks, the hasty judgments, and above all the silence of those who knew but did not speak.
But the difference is that when I, Mr Laurent Gbagbo, was locked up at the International Criminal Court, it was under the presidency of the very person who today denounces the injustice he suffers.
Life, you see, is a great teacher.
She always teaches, sooner or later, everyone according to their lesson.
I learned through suffering that the truth always comes out in the end, even if it takes its time.
I learned that human justice is often slow, sometimes blind, and too often influenced.
But I also learned that God’s justice is never wrong.
Today, I am free, in my country, surrounded by my people.
I forgave, not because I forgot, but because I understood that hatred is another prison, even more terrible than the walls of The Hague.
I therefore invite Mr. Sarkozy to experience this ordeal not as a humiliation, but as an initiation.
Let him meditate on what justice, dignity and truth really mean.
Life is not a straight line: it turns, it teaches, it surprises.
What we impose unfairly on another can one day turn against us.
May this experience make him understand that to govern is not to dominate, but to serve; to judge is not to condemn, but to understand.
Because in the end, it is neither the judges, nor the powerful, nor the titles that make a man just — it is his conscience.
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