fear of renewed tensions after the arrest of Ousmane Sonko

2023-07-30 17:59:33

While the climate seemed to be calming and Senegal was celebrating the Muslim holiday of Achoura, new legal proceedings were opened against Ousmane Sonko, sentenced to two years in prison in June in a rape case. The fact that his sentence had not yet been carried out fueled speculation.

And it was for a completely different matter that the main opponent was placed in police custody on Friday July 28: for “robbery and call for insurrection”. Before being arrested, he had explained on social networks to have ” snatched the phone of a policeman, present in front of his home, who refused to erase images taken without authorization. And asked “up to the people to be ready to face these endless abuses”.

Heavy charges against Ousmane Sonko

“The story of the theft of the mobile phone is only the trigger for his arrest, which was imminent», said the public prosecutor. The prosecution believes that, ” since a while “of the “acts, declarations, writings, images and manoeuvres” of the opponent were “constituting criminally reprehensible acts”.

Heavy charges are against him, with seven counts, including “call for insurrection” and “conspiracy against state authority”, between March 2021 and July 2023. However, the security system around the home where Ousmane Sonko had been living under house arrest since May 28, had been lifted a week ago, the government ruling out the risk of public order disturbances.

“A grotesque procedural pretext”

For his lawyer, Me Demba Ciré Bathily, “we will try to put on him all the events that have occurred in this country for two years”. In a press release, his defense denounces a “grotesque procedural pretext”, of the “unsubstantiated accusations” and the“unacceptable instrumentalization of the judiciary” intended, according to her, to exclude the opponent from the race for the presidential election of February 25, 2024. His party, the Pastef-les Patriotes, demands “his immediate release” and call “the Senegalese to resist constitutionally”.

In recent days, incidents and clashes have occurred in certain districts of Dakar and in Ziguinchor, a city of which Ousmane Sonko is the mayor. The security system has been reinforced in the capital. The fear of a new conflagration is in everyone’s mind. In June, his sentence to two years in prison, which makes him ineligible, had provoked violent riots and left 23 dead.

One question remains: if the prosecutor maintains that the procedure, “unrelated” to the rape case, does not call into question this judgment, Sonko’s lawyers believe that this judgment having been obtained in absentia, it is canceled from made by Friday’s arrest. A new trial for rape should then open. Also sentenced to six months suspended in May in a case for defamation, Ousmane Sonko seized the Supreme Court. He started a hunger strike on Sunday.