Ousmane Sonko, fiercest opponent of President Macky Sall and candidate for the 2024 presidential election, was charged and imprisoned on Monday for various crimes including calling for insurrection, and his party was dissolved, raising fears of further unrest in Senegal. Ousmane Sonko, 49, invested candidate by his party, thus sees a third legal procedure open against him, which risks further compromising his participation in the presidential election of February 2024.
Less than two hours after his indictment, Interior Minister Antoine Diome announced in a press release the dissolution of his party, the Pastef, created in 2015, justifying his decision by his “frequent” calls to “insurrectional movements” which according to him, caused many deaths in March 2021 and June 2023 and led to “acts of ransacking and looting of public and private property”. “The assets of the dissolved party will be liquidated,” the statement added.
The opponent was sentenced on June 1 to two years in prison in a sex scandal, a verdict which makes him ineligible as it stands, according to lawyers. His conviction had caused the most serious unrest in years in Senegal, which killed 16 people according to the authorities, around thirty according to the opposition.
“It’s a farce”, reacted Me Ciré Clédor Ly to the detention of his client on eight counts, including “call for insurrection, association of criminals, attack on state security, association criminals in connection with a terrorist enterprise” and “conspiracy against the authority of the State”. The lawyer denounced “a design that was formed, thought out, planned and executed”. The opponent continued his hunger strike on Monday, which he began on Sunday, his lawyers told the press.
They did not specify the place where he would be incarcerated. As these are criminal facts, “the judge can hold him until the case is heard,” said Mr. Babacar Ndiaye. “I have just been unjustly placed under a warrant of committal. If the Senegalese people, for whom I have always fought, abdicate and decide to leave me in the hands of the regime of Macky Sall, I will submit, as always, to the divine will”, reacted Ousmane Sonko on social networks after his face-to-face with the judge.
He was arrested on Friday after notably claiming on social networks that the security forces present in front of his home had filmed him. He said he “personally ripped the phone off and asked the person to unlock it and delete the footage they took,” which the person refused to do. The gendarmes then arrested him.
New unrest is now feared in Dakar and throughout Senegal. “We obviously expect demonstrations. The question is to know for how long and in what proportion,” Mamadou Ngom, an educator, told AFP. “This time I think it’s done for Sonko. The young people will certainly go out, but they can’t do anything more about it, ”said Sidiya Tall, 34, for his part.
Two people were killed in Ziguinchor, southern Senegal, during protests following the indictment and detention of opponent Ousmane Sonko. “Two lifeless male bodies” were discovered in Ziguinchor, the main city of Casamance, of which Ousmane Sonko is the mayor, the ministry said in a statement. The Ministry of the Interior “calls the populations to calm and serenity and informs them that all measures are taken to preserve peace and tranquility in the country”, according to this same document.
Senegalese authorities also temporarily cut internet access on mobile phones on Monday by highlighting the “dissemination of hateful and subversive messages” on social networks, after calls to demonstrate against the arrest of Mr. Sonko. Amnesty International denounced this restriction, which it considers “an attack on freedom of information”, and called on the authorities to “restore the internet”, in a message on Twitter renamed X.
