Five days after being arrested, El Malick Ndiaye was released from prison on Monday, March 27, with an electronic bracelet attached to his ankle. The national communication secretary of Pastef (African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity), a party led by opposition figure Ousmane Sonko, was arrested on Wednesday March 22 for spreading false news.
In question, a tweet where he indicated that an “individual dressed [in] a uniform of the multipurpose intervention brigade [had] sprayed President Ousmane Sonko with an unknown substance”. The investigation is still in progress, El Malick Ndiaye will be summoned later to be heard on the merits of the case.
This incarceration had provoked outrage on the opposition side as arrests multiplied. “In addition to Mr. Ndiaye, we have two other members of the political bureau and two members of the cabinet, including one in charge of security who was recently placed under house arrest with an electronic bracelet. Plus twenty of our departmental coordinators of young patriots. In total, more than 400 party members were arrested across the country,” said Ousseynou Ly, member of the national communications secretariat of Pastef.
“Drifts of power”?
A count on which Amnesty International is also working – without being able to give figures for the moment. Seydi Gassama, the executive director in Senegal, notes all the same that the incarcerations are more numerous than in March 2021, at the time of the riots caused by the arrest of Ousmane Sonko for disturbing public order while he was on his way to court in the rape case between him and a massage parlor employee.
“The goal is to deter any demonstration, while Macky Sall casts doubt on his third candidacy for the presidential election of 2024”, anticipates the human rights activist. He nevertheless recalls that preventive arrests had also been observed in 2011-2012, at the end of the mandate of former President Abdoulaye Wade and on the eve of the presidential election where the current Head of State was elected.
This time, the reasons for the offenses are repeated according to Me Abdoulaye Tall, lawyer and member of Pastef: disturbance of public order, dissemination of false news, attack on state security, defamation. Accusations which are based on comments often made on the official pages of the social networks of these political figures, where they denounce “excesses of power”. For example, Mouhamed Bilal Diatta, mayor of Keur Massar Sud in the suburbs of Dakar, was arrested for calling for an insurrection and offending the head of state after telling young people to join the resistance.
The lawyer Me Tall notes all the same that, in the regions, those arrested went to a hearing in flagrante delicto and were quickly released or released. But, in Dakar, “those arrested are brought before the investigating judge to be able to keep them under a warrant of committal”, according to him. “It’s an attack on free expression, the objective is to discourage political actors and dismantle the Pastef”, pleads Me Tall.
The Pastef targeted and not the opposition
Its president, Ousmane Sonko, current mayor of Ziguinchor and who came third in the 2019 presidential election, is one of the most popular opposition figures who accuse the regime in place of wanting to take him out of the political arena. and dismiss him from the presidential race of 2024, in which he has already applied.
“The coalition castigates these undemocratic practices,” said Déthié Fall, president of the opposition Republican Party for Progress and one of the leaders of the opposition coalition Yewwi Askan Wi to which Pastef belongs. Marches are also scheduled for March 29 and 30, the day before and the day of the trial of Ousmane Sonko, prosecuted for defamation by the Minister of Tourism, Mame Mbaye Niang, as well as April 3, the day before the National Day. Senegalese, to say “stop arbitrary arrests” and to demand the release of “political hostages”.
But for Pape Mahaw Diouf, spokesman for the presidential coalition Benno Bokk Yakaar, these arrests have nothing to do with politics. “These people are not arrested for offenses of opinion, expression or conscience, these are concrete facts that are linked to the dissemination of false news or disturbances to public order or even at the limit of acts of terrorism that threaten the Republic of Senegal,” he notes. But he specifies that it is the Pastef party which is concerned by the arrests and not the opposition. “This party has a verbally and physically violent style that is dangerous to our democracy. It must be eradicated from Senegalese political life, ”assumes the politician.
