Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara on Monday announced amnesties for around 800 people, including former first lady Simone Gbagbo who is currently behind bars, in the name of national reconciliation.
Last week Ivory Coast's Supreme Court overturned an earlier acquittal granted to Gbagbo for crimes against humanity.
The wife of former president Laurent Gbagbo, in power from 2000 to 2010, will "soon be freed," Ouattara said during a televised address to the West African nation on the eve of the country's independence day.
The Ivory Coast was plunged into political violence in the aftermath of a bitterly contested presidential election that pitted Gbagbo against Ouatarra, who eventually won out.
Simone Gbagbo has been serving a 20-year sentence handed to her in 2015 for "endangering state security" for her role in the political violence.
She had been accused of implication in the 2011 shelling of a market in a district of the capital Abidjan that supported Ouattara and for being a member of a "crisis cell" that allegedly coordinated attacks by the armed forces and militias in support of her husband.
Laurent Gbagbo has been in detention at the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague for seven years.
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