Thursday evening was rocked by violence in Dakar. Clashes erupted in the capital of Senegal following the conviction of opponent Ousmane Sonko, presidential candidate for 2024. He is more than ever threatened with ineligibility despite being the fiercest opponent of the President Macky Sall. Degradations, deaths, restricted social networks… Back to the events.
A conviction for “youth corruption”
Ousmane Sonko, third in the 2019 presidential election, was sentenced on Thursday by a criminal chamber to two years in prison for “youth corruption”, an offense which consists of promoting the “debauchery” of a young person under 21 years old. He was accused of rape and death threats against an employee of a beauty salon where he was going to have a massage between 2020 and 2021. The employee, Adji Sarr, was under 21 at the time of the events she denounces. The court acquitted him of charges of rape and death threats. The issue was as much criminal as political. The decision seems, in view of the electoral code, to lead to the ineligibility of Ousmane Sonko.
Absent at the delivery of the judgment, just like during his trial, Ousmane Sonko is presumed blocked by the security forces at his home in the capital, “kidnapped” according to his words. But, after two years of a confrontation with the authorities which kept the country in suspense, he can now be arrested “at any time”, Justice Minister Ismaïla Madior Fall told journalists. “We are satisfied with Sonko’s guilt,” Me El Hadji Diouf, Adji Sarr’s lawyer, told the press. But 20 million FCFA (30,000 euros) in damages is little for the “suffering” she endured, he lamented.
Violence and death
Without waiting for such an arrest, the dreaded troubles before the deliberation broke out in Dakar and in several cities. The University of Dakar has taken on the air of a battlefield. Groups of young people confronted with stones the police retaliating with tear gas. Several buses from the medical school, the history department and the country’s main school of journalism were set on fire and offices ransacked. Apart from these hotbeds of violence, the streets of Dakar have been deserted.
Clashes and looting of public property, shops and petrol stations have been reported in Dakar and its suburbs, but also in Ziguinchor (south), where several people were killed, in Mbour and Kaolack (west) or Saint- Louis (north). “We noted with regret violence that led to the destruction of public and private property and, unfortunately, nine deaths in Dakar and Ziguinchor” (south), Interior Minister Antoine Diome said in a short message broadcast by national television at night.
Restricted social networks
The minister also confirmed that the authorities had restricted access to social networks, which was observed for example for Facebook, WhatsApp or Twitter. “Having noted the dissemination of hateful and subversive messages on social networks, the State of Senegal in all sovereignty has decided to temporarily suspend the use of certain digital applications,” he said. He called for calm and assured that the state was taking “all necessary security measures”.
The Netblocks internet monitoring service said in a message to AFP that it observed a “situation (which) resembles that observed in 2021”. Senegal had then been plagued by deadly riots, which an arrest by Ousmane Sonko had already helped to trigger.