Twelve people detained for four years as part of an investigation into the massacre of 14 men in Casamance, southern Senegal, have been “cleared and released” and 13 others returned to a criminal chamber, we learned Monday with their lawyer.
The 12 people who had been detained since January 2018 in Ziguinchor, the main city of Casamance, were released on Friday, Me Ciré Clédor Ly told AFP.
Thirteen other detainees, including a journalist, Réné Caprin Bassène, and a member of the political wing of the Casamance rebellion, Omar Ampoi Bodian, “were sent back to the criminal chamber” of the Ziguinchor High Court for a trial whose date is not yet fixed, indicated Me Ly.
They are prosecuted for “criminal association, assassination, attempted assassination, participation in an insurrectionary movement, illegal arrests and sequestrations, illegal possession of weapons, theft in meetings with the carrying of weapons and the use of violence”, a-t -He specifies.
Twenty-seven people were prosecuted in the investigation into the 2018 killings, including César Atoute Badiate, a military leader of the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC), the armed rebellion which has been struggling for nearly 40 years for the independence of Casamance.
Mr. Badiate is the only one who has not been arrested. One of the 26 detainees died in the meantime in prison at the age of 82, said Me Ly.
On January 6, 2018, fourteen men who had gone to look for wood in the protected forest of Bayotte, near Ziguinchor, were rounded up and then killed in cold blood by armed individuals.
The lawyer made no connection between the release of the 12 detainees and the incidents that occurred at the beginning of last week in Casamance.
This release takes place following the announcement, on January 24 and 25 by the army, of the death of two soldiers from the West African mission in Gambia (Ecomig) and the disappearance of nine others following a clash. with presumed MFDC rebels in Gambia, neighboring Senegal, during a security operation and once morest illicit trafficking, including that of wood in Gambian territory.
A delegation from the Sant’Egidio Catholic community has been in The Gambia since January 27 for mediation between the conflicting parties, a source in this organization told AFP on Monday.
This mediation resulted in the handing over to representatives of the West African mission on Sunday of the bodies of two soldiers, Sant’Egidio said in a statement on Monday, which referred to it as “seven ECOWAS soldiers” held hostage, in the hands of the men of the rebel military leader Salif Sadio.
Sant’Egidio advocates “the release of all prisoners”, in its press release. Three suspected rebels are being held by West African troops, she said.
Sant’Egidio had in 2012 obtained the release of five soldiers detained for a year by Salif Sadio.
The Gambia, a country partially landlocked in Senegal, is home to rebels from Casamance, a region in southern Senegal separated from the rest of the country by Gambian territory.
After claiming thousands of lives and devastating the economy, the conflict has persisted at low intensity. Senegal is working to normalize the situation and has undertaken to resettle the displaced.
Ecomig was set up by ECOWAS in the face of the political crisis born of the refusal of the Gambian ex-president and dictator Yahya Jammeh to leave power following his defeat in the presidential election of December 2016.
Mr. Jammeh was finally forced into exile in January 2017 by international pressure and the entry of West African troops on Gambian soil.
