A Senegalese judge on Tuesday ordered the return to prison of journalist Pape Alé Niang, less than a week after his release under pressure from the profession and human rights defenders, we learned from his lawyers and the wooden floor.
Boss of the Dakar Matin news site, the journalist was released and placed under judicial supervision on December 14 more than a month after being charged and imprisoned for “disclosure of information likely to harm National Defense”, ” concealment of administrative and military documents” and “dissemination of false news”.
His case had mobilized the profession and he himself had observed a hunger strike for a dozen days.
Pape Alé Niang was arrested on Monday evening by the police and presented on Tuesday to a judge at the Dakar court who “revoked his decision on provisional release accompanied by judicial review”, Moussa Sarr, one of his lawyers, told AFP. “He will go back to prison,” he added.
This new detention follows the request of the prosecution which considers that Pape Alé Niang discussed his legal file Monday on social networks with a Senegalese activist abroad, while his judicial control prohibited him from doing so, said Mr Sarr. He is also accused of a “tweet concerning the director general of the police”, he added.
The Dakar public prosecutor’s office “informs public opinion of the revocation of the judicial review enjoyed by the accused Pape Alé Niang”, in a press release published Tuesday evening.
He explains this decision by “the latest media outings” of the journalist which are “a violation of the prescribed obligations, in particular those which prohibited him from communicating in any form on the facts subject to prosecution”.
However, according to the prosecutor’s office, “the defendant largely contravened his obligations by voluntarily addressing during his lives on Youtube the facts prosecuted” and during which he carried out “unjustified attacks both against a police authority and against the investigators”.
The journalist claims to be “the subject of abominable relentlessness and persecution” on the part of the Senegalese government, which “decided to silence (him) at all costs”, in a statement sent to the press, before the text of the prosecution, by the Coordination of Press Associations (CAP), a trade union organization.
The journalist’s detention sparked a wave of criticism from the press and civil society against the authorities. Senegal is readily praised by its partners for its democratic practices, but human rights defenders qualify this assessment.
Senegal is 73rd out of 180 in the latest press freedom ranking established by Reporters Without Borders. The country fell 24 places compared to 2021.