2023-07-14 17:46:40
Lawyer Juan Branco, representative of Senegalese opposition leader Ousmane Sonko, during a press conference in Paris on June 22, 2023. STEFANO RELLANDINI / AFP
Senegalese justice announced on Friday July 14 that it was issuing an international arrest warrant against Juan Branco, French lawyer for Senegalese opponent Ousmane Sonko, for “crimes and misdemeanors” in connection with the unrest that occurred in early June in Senegal.
“After receiving the compilation of statements, writings and posts” lawyer, “it has been identified elements which, obviously, are likely to engage his criminal liability”says a press release from the prosecution sent Friday to Agence France-Presse (AFP), announcing “the opening of a judicial investigation”. Besides, “A warrant of arrest has been requested against him”adds the text.
Juan Branco announced on June 22 that he had filed a complaint in France and a request for an investigation at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague against Senegalese President Macky Sall. He accuses Mr. Sall of crimes against humanity, after the worst disturbances that Senegal has known in early June for years.
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These proceedings for crimes against humanity also target the Senegalese Minister of the Interior, Antoine Félix Abdoulaye Diome, General Moussa Fall, commander of the Senegalese gendarmerie, as well as a hundred “other individuals”and relate to a period ranging from “from March 2021 to June 2023”. This action before the international and French courts had been described as “childish and ridiculous” by the Senegalese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Aïssata Tall Sall.
Report from the Quai d’Orsay
The two-year prison sentence on June 1 of opponent Ousmane Sonko had caused serious unrest in Senegal, killing sixteen officially and thirty according to the opposition. His arrest, following a complaint in a sex scandal, helped trigger several days of deadly riots, looting and destruction in March 2021 that left at least a dozen people dead.
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Mr. Sonko denounces a plot to exclude him from the presidential election of February 2024 and his party estimates the number of “political detainees”. The government denies both charges.
The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced to AFP on Thursday that it had made a report to the French judicial authorities after the revelation by lawyer Juan Branco, in “recent publications”the identity of officials of the French Embassy in Senegal, in connection with the unrest in Senegal.
On July 3, Macky Sall, elected in 2012 for seven years and re-elected in 2019 for five years, announced that he would not run for a new presidential term in 2024.
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