March 10 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The former Prime Minister of Senegal Cheikh Hadjibou Soumaré has been accused this Friday of defamation and spreading false news, a day after his arrest at a police station in Dakar, where he was summoned for a letter to the president, Macky Sall, in the that asked him about an alleged “donation” to a French politician, who is suspected to be the leader of the National Rally, Marine Le Pen.
Soumaré, who returned home this Friday after spending a night in police custody, asked Sall in that letter if he had recently given money to “a French political figure” and if the amount was twelve million euros, as was speculated, reports the Senegalese newspaper ‘Le Soleil’.
During the interrogation to which he was subjected on Thursday, the former prime minister and current leader of Democracy and Republic stressed that at no time did Sall accuse, so he is not in a position to present any evidence, but limited himself to asking about the ” salon rumors and other gossip” that he had heard.
Likewise, Soumaré did not confirm the identity of that “French political figure”, although it would be the far-right Le Pen, who met Sall in mid-January on the occasion of his controversial visit to Dakar. In this sense, and given her status as a “political leader”, she defended her right to ask the president.
For his part, the government spokesman, Abdou Karim Fofana, already rejected at the beginning of the week in a brief but forceful statement the “cowardly and baseless insinuations” by Soumaré, whom he accuses of trying to “discredit” the president and “harm relations between Senegal and a foreign power”.
Therefore, the Government reserves the possibility of “taking the measures it deems appropriate regarding these fallacious, malicious and unworthy insinuations of someone who has held a high state position”, according to the statement echoed by the newspaper ‘Le Quotidien’ .
