Tensions did not wait for the opening of the hearing scheduled for Tuesday, May 16 to erupt. As of Monday, the climate was very heavy in Ziginchor, of which Ousmane Sonko is mayor and where the opponent has chosen to take refuge for a few days. During the day, both in Dakar and in the large city of Casamance, clashes opposed the police and his supporters, determined to defend their leader. A police officer died, hit by a police vehicle, the interior ministry confirmed.
While he now refuses to respond to summonses from a justice he considers “manipulated”, Ousmane Sonko risks arrest. It has been more than two years since the case, both political and judicial, has divided Senegal. If the hearing on Tuesday 16 promises to be centered on the procedure, it is symbolic. The main opponent of Macky Sall is being prosecuted for repeated rapes and death threats against Adji Sarr, an employee of the Sweet Beauty massage parlour.
In the country of the soutoura, a term which designates the culture of silence which weighs on the stories of mores and sexual violence, the “Sweet Beauty” affair as the Senegalese press has renamed it carries a scent of scandal.
Adji Raby Sarr, now 23, claims that Ousmane Sonko subjected her to repeated rapes there from June 2020 to February 2021. Attacks which would have been accompanied by death threats. In March 2022, she described to Le Monde a double rape she allegedly suffered in a hot tub in December 2020. In February 2021, eight months after the first alleged assault, Adji Sarr filed a complaint for repeated rapes and death threats. “He kept telling me that he would be the future president of Senegal and that I had no interest in talking, that no one would believe me,” she explains.
A line of defense that has not moved
So many accusations that Ousmane Sonko categorically denies, claiming to have had a massage to “treat back problems”. And from the outset, they ignite the spirits. In March 2021, when Ousmane Sonko was arrested on his way to the summons of the gendarmerie, his supporters mobilized in numbers in Dakar and Ziginchor. Looting of supermarkets, clashes with the police… Anger and repression last five days. Report of the riots: 14 people killed and nearly 600 others injured according to the Red Cross.
From the start, the leader of the African Patriots of Senegal party for work, ethics and fraternity (Pastef), who has established himself as the main opponent of President Macky Sall, denounces a manipulation of power. “We are faced with a strictly political affair, instrumentalized by Macky Sall to dismiss the best-placed candidate from the presidential race”, he tweeted in February 2021.
His line of defense did not move. Ousmane Sonko accuses President Macky Sall – who casts doubt on a third presidential candidacy in 2024 – of trying to exclude him from the race for the highest office. The opponent of patriotic and anti-Western rhetoric had a lightning political ascent, which began in 2016. He was then dismissed from the public service for having accused several personalities, including the president’s brother, Aliou Sall, of tax evasion. This forged its popularity with young urbanites and the diaspora. In 2019, he won 15% of the votes and came third in the presidential election.
The political conspiracy theory is fueled by the gray areas surrounding this sensitive issue. Defenders of Ousmane Sonko thus point to the family ties between the friend who accompanied Adji Sarr to the hospital and to the police, Sidy Ahmed Mbaye, and power: the man is the nephew of a coalition executive presidential. The controversy also swelled around the medical certificate made after the complaint of the alleged victim.
Distrust of justice
So many elements used by Ousmane Sonko to refuse to perform a DNA test. To the judge who offered him to submit to it in November 2022, during a hearing, he replied: “Would I accept samples for a DNA test? I said, “But you, are you okay? In there [pointing to his head], are you okay? You have no proof and you want me to give my blood to conspirators? (…) My blood, you will never have it”, he reported during a press conference in Dakar.
This mistrust of justice has continued to grow in recent months with the arrests of Pastef activists and the legal setbacks of their leader. Eight days ago, Ousmane Sonko was given a six-month suspended prison sentence for defamation of tourism minister Mame Mbaye Niang. A judgment for which he seized the Court of Cassation. “All these cases are a political conspiracy whose unfair objective is to deprive a political opponent of his rights to compete in an election allowing him to access the highest offices of the State”, insists Sonko’s lawyer, Mr. Ciré Clédor Ly.
Ousmane Sonko faces ten to twenty years in prison. A conviction would therefore annihilate his political ambitions, even if his party refuses for the moment to consider it. “From A to Z, our plan at Pastef remains and will remain Ousmane Sonko. He will be our candidate regardless of the court sentences,” warns El Malick Ndiaye, Pastef coordinator.
Faced with the risk of street mobilization and violence, civil society calls for an exemplary trial. “Our justice suffers from being perceived as biased, regrets Seydi Gassama, director of Amnesty International in Senegal. This trial is therefore crucial for the country. He must stand in serenity and fairness at the risk of otherwise witnessing a new explosion of anger. »
