A court in Dakar has sentenced Ousmane Sonko, the main Senegalese opposition leader, to two years in prison and a fine of about 900 euros for the crime of sexual “corruption” of a young woman, a sentence that could exclude him from the elections. presidential elections of February 2024. However, he was acquitted of the crime of rape. Sonko, who refused to attend the trial held last week, has been held since last Sunday by the police at his home in the Senegalese capital, which surrounds the property and prevents him from receiving visitors, which has caused numerous disturbances and clashes. between police and Sonko supporters in Dakar. The announcement of the verdict has generated a new outbreak of protests in the capital, as well as in other cities of the country.
An immense black smoke rises from the heart of the Cheikh Anta Diop University, in the center of Dakar. A group of students, entrenched on campus, have set fire to tables and other belongings. Covered behind the barricade, they throw stones at about thirty policemen who respond from the entrance with tear gas, whose white and irritating smoke spreads through the area. The access avenue to the enclosure is full of rubble and remains of bonfires. A small bus tries to get around the obstacles, but the agents stop it and beat the young people inside. forbidden to pass
Columns of smoke also emerge from other neighborhoods of the city, such as Plateau, Medina, Colobane and HLM, as well as from Cité Keur Gorgui, where Ousmane Sonko himself is being held by the police. The traffic has disappeared, it is impossible to navigate, and here and there, in the streets deserted with vehicles, more groups of young people with their faces covered face off with law enforcement officers. Identical images from the cities of Mbour, Guediawaye, Pikine or Ziguinchor began to circulate on social networks and mobile phones. The National Political Council of Sonko’s party, African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity (Pastef), has urged all Senegalese to take to the streets to “confront the dictatorial and bloodthirsty drift of the Macky regime out”.
This was Senegal this Thursday after Sonko was sentenced, after the tension began to rise in recent days with hundreds of young people blocking traffic on different roads by placing barricades or burning tires and attacking private homes of people close to power, which had led to clashes with law enforcement. Dozens of people were detained, including prominent members of citizen movements and the opposition. Numerous witnesses alerted to the presence of armed people dressed as civilians who were shooting at the demonstrators.
In February 2021, Ousmane Sonko was accused of repeated rape and death threats by Adji Sarr, a young massage parlor worker. The opposition leader admitted that he went to this establishment for his back pain, but denied at all times that he had had relations, consensual or forced, with the complainant. Likewise, he argued that this accusation was a setup orchestrated from power to exclude him from the presidential race and decided not to appear in the judicial process, arguing that his safety was not guaranteed. The prosecutor had asked for 10 years in prison for rape, a crime for which he was finally acquitted, or five for “corruption of young people.”
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This crime is contemplated in article 324 of the Senegalese Penal Code and consists of “attacking morality by habitually executing, favoring or facilitating the debauchery or corruption of young people of either sex under 21 years of age, or, even occasionally, minors.” from the age of 16″. The masseuse was 20 years old at the time she filed the complaint. The penalties provided for this crime range from two to five years in prison and fines between 450 and 6,000 euros. In addition, Sonko has been convicted in absentia for failing to appear at trial despite being notified, which limits his ability to file an appeal.
This legal process has kept Senegal on edge for the past two years. Already in February 2021, after the detention of Ousmane Sonko for a few days, serious riots broke out throughout the country that ended with fifteen deaths. Since then, the incidents have been reproduced periodically each time the opposition leader, who has significant support from young people, had to go to testify in court, both for the investigation of this trial and for another process in his against for defamation, which ends on May 8 with a sentence of six months in prison.
Last Friday, after the trial was held in absentia, Sonko decided to start his return from Ziguinchor to Dakar in a convoy of vehicles, which he named “the caravan of freedom”. However, on Sunday he was stopped halfway and taken by force to his home in the Senegalese capital, where he has been held ever since. On Monday he managed to record a video and broadcast a message through social networks in which he claimed to be “kidnapped” and called on young people to “rise up as one man” and “take to the streets en masse” in a ” national resistance movement. The authorities, for their part, had assured that they would maintain public order at all costs.
Meanwhile, the Senegalese president, Macky Sall, inaugurated this Wednesday the so-called “national dialogue” with a part of the opposition to try to reduce the political tension. However, this process was hampered by the absence of the coalition led by Sonko and other important political leaders. At the bottom of all this tension is the fact that Macky Sall, in power since 2012, is considering running for a third term in the February 2024 elections, a possibility expressly prohibited in the Constitution. Sall would be empowered to run in the elections for having reformed the Magna Carta during his first term, as Alpha Condé in Guinea or Alassane Ouattara in the Ivory Coast did recently.
Ousmane Sonko, who was a union leader in his time as a Tax Administration official, made the leap into politics in the 2017 legislative elections, when he was elected deputy at the head of Pastef. His political action has been characterized since then by his frontal denunciation of corruption, maintaining an anti-French and rupture discourse. In the 2019 presidential elections it came in third place with a creditable 15%, while in the 2022 legislative elections the coalition it led was on the verge of wresting the absolute majority from Benno Bokk Yakar, the coalition in power, making it de facto the main opposition leader.
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