Submit a brief to the CFI to request a preliminary investigation into the last two years of political violence in the country
June 23 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The lawyer of the Senegalese opposition leader Ousmane Sonko, Juan Branco, has accused the government of the African country of committing crimes against humanity during its violent repression of the protests for the release of the detained dissident.
In a letter addressed to the Attorney General of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, and accompanied by extremely graphic images of alleged protesters mutilated in the face and body by the violence of the Police and associated gangs, Branco details these crimes as “part of a widespread attack committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population”, by the security forces of the president, Macky Sall.
“We ask you to promptly open a preliminary examination on the situation in Senegal,” Branco said in his petition, published on his website, where the French lawyer collects “710 pieces of evidence” of these abuses committed between March 2021 and March 2023.
Branco describes a plot starring the president of Sall, his Interior Minister, Antoine Félix Diome, as well as “112 suspects throughout the chain of command” who are listed as accused of these crimes that have cost the lives of fifty people ” in a context where the discovery of gas and oil resources in this territory has generated in them the greed to stay in power at all costs”.
The lawyer, however, describes these estimates — also obtained from data collected by NGOs such as Amnesty International or the Senegal Red Cross — as “enormously conservative” and understands that, since the victims could number “in the thousands”, it is impossible to establish the balance with the “precision required by the criminal procedure”, hence in part the request for the investigation.
Sonko, leader of the Patriots of Senegal party (PASTEF) has spent years denouncing that he is the victim of political persecution by order of the country’s president that has resulted in several cases against him.
Tension in the country peaked at the beginning of the month, with the death of more than 15 people after Sonko was sentenced to two years in prison for “corruption of youth” in the framework of a process for alleged rape and threats of death, charges that were ultimately dismissed.
The opposition has denounced on several occasions that Sall plans to run for a third term. The Senegalese Constitution limits the total number of terms to two and an attempt to extend his stay in power could lead to instability, although the president has defended that it would be legal for him to appear at the polls, a point that he has not yet confirmed. .
