The pressure is increasing against Ousmane Sonko. The fiercest opponent of the Senegalese president, Macky Sall, was charged and imprisoned on Monday July 31 for various crimes including calling for an insurrection, and his party was dissolved. Mr. Sonko, 49, thus sees the opening of a third legal procedure against him, which risks further compromising his participation in the presidential election of February 2024.
Less than two hours after Mr. Sonko’s indictment, the Minister of the Interior, Antoine Diome, announced in a press release the dissolution of his party, the Pastef, created in 2014, justifying his decision by the “frequent” calls of its founder to “insurrectionary movements” which, according to him, left many dead in March 2021 and June 2023 and led to “acts of ransacking and looting of public and private property”.
Mr. Sonko’s party reacted in a press release sent to Agence France-Presse (AFP). The “stability [of Senegal] is now compromised, because the people will never accept this ultimate forfeiture”, writes the party, denouncing imprisonment “under fallacious grounds” and saying it plans to attack the dissolution by “legal means”. .
The opponent was sentenced on June 1 to two years in prison in a morality case, a verdict which makes him ineligible as it stands, according to lawyers. His conviction had caused the most serious disturbances for years in Senegal, which left sixteen dead 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”. After being arrested on Friday, the opponent continued his hunger strike on Monday, which he began on Sunday, his lawyers told the press.
Interruption d’Internet
Authorities on Monday temporarily cut off internet access on mobile phones citing the “spread of hateful and subversive messages” on social media after calls for protests against Mr. Sonko’s arrest.
Sporadic clashes erupted in the early evening at the Parcelles Assainies, in the suburbs of Dakar, where young people attacked the police, who dispersed them with tear gas, noted journalists from the AFP. In the center of the capital, many people, worried, rushed to take the means of transport, which were becoming scarce. The company that manages the fast train linking Dakar to its suburbs announced Monday afternoon on the social network X (ex-Twitter) “the stoppage of traffic on the entire line due to malicious acts” committed by protesters.
In Ziguinchor, the big city in the south of which Mr. Sonko is the mayor, clashes broke out between his supporters and the police, noted an AFP correspondent. Groups of young people threw stones at the police, who tried to disperse them with tear gas canisters. Several streets were blocked by protesters.
Mr. Sonko shouts at the conspiracy of the President of the Republic, Macky Sall, to dismiss him from the presidential election of 2024. The Senegalese head of state, elected in 2012 for seven years then re-elected in 2019 for five years, is forbidden. He announced on July 3 that he would not stand for that election.
