Main Senegalese opposition politician Ousmane Sonko was arrested on Friday 28 July 2023 for allegedly stealing a gendarme’s telephone and posting a “subversive” message.
The firebrand politician, a thorn within the flesh of President Macky Sall, has confronted quite a lot of authorized woes, which he says are geared toward protecting him out of politics.
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His sentencing final month in an ethical corruption case sparked deadly clashes that left 16 lifeless, in line with the federal government, 24 in line with Amnesty Worldwide, and 30, in line with Sonko’s PASTEF get together.
Senegal’s public prosecutor mentioned the politician had stolen the cell phone of a gendarme whose automobile had damaged down close to Sonko’s dwelling on Friday and issued a subversive message on social media.
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Safety forces movie his dwelling
On Friday afternoon, Sonko had mentioned on social media that safety forces stationed exterior his dwelling had been filming him. He mentioned he had taken one of many telephones and demanded the photographs be deleted — a request he claimed was denied.
“I ask the individuals to face able to face this infinite abuse,” Sonko wrote. The prosecutor mentioned the politician had “for a while” dedicated “criminally reprehensible” acts and that an investigation into “varied counts of offences and crimes” had been ordered.
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Sonko’s get together mentioned he had been “brutally arrested” and known as on Senegalese individuals to “constitutionally resist these abuses”. One in every of Sonko’s attorneys, Cheikh Koureyssi Ba, mentioned on Fb that Sonko was already being interrogated.
One other lawyer, Abdoulaye Tall, advised native media that Sonko was in police custody. On Friday night, individuals had been gathering exterior Sonko’s Dakar dwelling, an AFP journalist reported.
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On June 1, Sonko was sentenced in absentia to 2 years in jail for morally corrupting a younger girl, which makes him ineligible to face in subsequent yr’s presidential election.
Police blocked Sonko?
He was blocked in his dwelling by a safety element between Might 28 and July 24. As a result of he was tried in absentia, a retrial would possible be ordered if he had been arrested in relation to that case.
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The federal government has beforehand mentioned he might be arrested over that affair at any time. Friday’s arrest doesn’t look like associated to the ethical corruption case, nonetheless.
Courtroom orders suspended sentence
In one other affair, an appeals court docket on Might 8 gave him a six-month suspended sentence. A former civil servant, Sonko rose to prominence in presidential elections in 2019, coming third after a marketing campaign that took intention at President Sall and the nation’s ruling elite.
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He has portrayed Sall as a would-be dictator, whereas the president’s supporters name him a rabble-rouser who has sown instability. Sall, in early July, eased tensions within the usually steady West African nation by asserting he wouldn’t search a controversial third mandate, following months of ambiguity and hypothesis about his intentions.
mrb-amt-sjd-prc/giv© Agence France-Presse
