2023-06-23 15:54:59
SENEGAL-FRANCE-ICC-PRESIDENTIAL-ELECTIONS-TROUBLES-JUSTICE
Complaint against the Senegalese president: “childish and ridiculous” according to a minister
PARIS, June 23, 2023 – Senegalese Foreign Minister Aïssata Tall Sall on Friday described as “puerile and ridiculous” the action announced to international and French justice by one of the lawyers of opponent Ousmane Sonko after the unrest. from the beginning of June.
Mr. Sonko was sentenced on June 1 to two years in prison, which currently makes him ineligible for the 2024 presidential election and which sparked violent protests, causing 16 deaths according to the government, 30 according to the party by Mr. Sonko.
A lawyer for Mr. Sonko, Mr. Juan Branco, presented Thursday in Paris the content of a complaint filed in France, as well as a request for an investigation at the ICC. These acts target Senegalese President Macky Sall, his Interior Minister Antoine Diome, General Moussa Fall, commander of the Senegalese gendarmerie, as well as a hundred other people according to him.
The approach “is both childish and ridiculous”, said the Minister of Foreign Affairs to Radio France Internationale and France 24.
She disputed that French justice could act in the name of the principle of universal jurisdiction. As for the ICC, “the International Criminal Court cannot rule as long as there is national internal justice that follows its course for the same facts, and this is the case in Senegal”.
She invoked the seriousness of the unrest and the right of the security forces to defend themselves, and assured that “independent” investigations were opened.
“This legal initiative, for us, is childishness and also ridiculous,” she said.
With AFP
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