A person died Monday, March 20 in Casamance, in the south of Senegal, during clashes between the police and supporters of the opponent Ousmane Sonko, “hospitalized” for four days in Dakar, learned AFP from local, administrative and party sources.
The opponent has been in a private clinic in Dakar since March 16, where he is receiving treatment, after claiming to have felt ill from the tear gas sent by the police during his forced transfer to the court. Dakar where his defamation trial was held against a minister, two leaders of his party El Hadji Malick Ndiaye and Ousseynou Ly told AFP.
“Since the FDS [Forces de Défense et de Sécurité] dropped me off at my home [in Dakar], I have been subject to terrible dizziness, I have pain in my lower abdomen and I have difficulty breathing,” said writes the opponent Thursday evening on his Facebook page on his return home. “We shipped the product that was sprayed on me to France to find out what it is,” Mr. Sonko said from his hospital bed. He said he would leave the clinic on Tuesday to continue his recovery at home.
The Senegalese president “Macky Sall is openly engaged in yet another assassination attempt on my person”, he added, accusations taken up by his party which speaks of “poisoning”. The authorities did not react. Macky Sall kept open the question of his candidacy for a third term in 2024, in a French magazine L’Express and posted online on Monday.
“A kid was shot”
Since March 16, the day the trial of Mr. Sonko, sued for defamation by the Minister of Tourism Mame Mbaye Niang, began, clashes have pitted groups of young people against the security forces in several cities of the country. The hearing was adjourned to March 30.
In the town of Bignona, a stronghold of Mr. Sonko about thirty kilometers from Ziguinchor, the main town of Casamance, “a kid was shot dead” on Monday by the police, Yankhoba Diémé told AFP, the president of the eponymous departmental council, a local institution.
Clashes erupted with the police when “young people spontaneously came out to demonstrate in the street” against the government, said Mr. Diémé, a member of Mr. Sonko’s party. The information was confirmed to AFP by an administrative official.
Security forces have since March 16 arrested more than 400 people across the country during anti-government protests, Mr. Ndiaye, head of communications for Mr. Sonko’s party, told AFP on Monday. Contacted by AFP, the police and the gendarmerie did not react.
Towards an ineligibility of Ousmane Sonko?
Minister Niang is suing Mr. Sonko for defamation, insults and forgery. He accuses him of having declared that he had been singled out by a report from a control institution for his management of a fund for the employment of young people in agriculture.
The issue goes far beyond the reputation of the minister. The texts in force provide for removal from the electoral lists, and therefore ineligibility, in certain cases of conviction. Mr. Sonko therefore risks being declared ineligible for the 2024 presidential election. He and his supporters denounce the instrumentalization of justice by power to eliminate him politically.
In March 2021, Mr. Sonko’s accusation in another case of alleged rape and his arrest on the way to court had contributed to triggering the most serious riots in years in this country known as a rare island of stability in a troubled region. They had caused at least a dozen deaths. The trial has not yet taken place.
