2023-08-06 04:25:49
French lawyer Juan Branco, targeted since July 14 by an international arrest warrant issued by Senegal, was arrested in this West African country, according to local officials and colleagues of the lawyer.
“The lawyer who came here to denigrate our institutions is in the hands of the BIP (multipurpose intervention brigade, a Senegalese police unit). Juan Branco, to name him, is in the hands of the BIP,” Interior Minister Antoine Abdoulaye Félix Diome told the National Assembly.
Me Branco was arrested in Mauritania and handed over to Dakar on Saturday, said his Parisian lawyers, for whom their client was trying “to escape the political persecution which had been promised to him”. They denounce a “pure and simple instrumentalization of the Penal Code for political purposes”.
According to local media, Mr. Branco was arrested as he left Senegal dressed as a fisherman aboard a canoe. He requested Spanish consular assistance, due to his dual nationality.
Senegalese president accused by Branco of “crimes against humanity”
The French lawyer made a name for himself in the country by defending Ousmane Sonko, a Senegalese political opponent recently implicated for calling for an insurrection and sentenced in early June to two years in prison for “corruption of the youth “. His arrest followed widespread calls for protests across the country, which recently prompted the government to suspend TikTok.
It was in the context of this case that Juan Branco announced a referral to the International Criminal Court in The Hague against Senegalese President Macky Sall for “crimes against humanity” in June, when the country had just experienced its worst trouble for many years.
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