2023-05-20 09:43:47
Published on :
The Senegalese opponent Ousmane Sonko demanded, Friday evening, guarantees on his personal safety to be present at his trial for alleged rapes, three days before a new hearing in Dakar.
After the postponement of his rape trial to May 23 in a context of unrest, Ousmane Sonko demanded, Friday, May 19, guarantees on his personal safety to be present at the new hearing in Dakar, in three days.
The Senegalese opponent has a new legal appointment likely to cause new tensions in the country, following a trial opened on May 16 in his absence, then dismissed the same day.
“The day I will be given guarantees, I will come to Dakar and on Tuesday I will be in court. If all the (security) conditions are met, I will be there,” he said in an interview on the night of Friday to Saturday on television.
In Dakar, the police “made me suffer violence, brutality. My house is barricaded and they tried to assassinate me”, he denounced in the Wolof language, accusing the power. “I am chased everywhere. I was injured (during an intervention by the police, editor’s note). My activists receive tear gas canisters or are arrested by the hundreds. The judicial institution must not be the armed wing of the executive to eliminate a presidential candidate (of 2024)”.
President Macky Sall, elected in 2012 and re-elected in 2019, remains silent regarding his intentions.
“No judicial summons”
Ousmane Sonko also claimed to have received “no summons” from the courts for his trial for alleged “rape and death threats”. He denounced an “empty” file made of accusations made by “a girl who lies” and to whom the authorities “made promises of money and a passport” to go abroad.
The Senegalese opponent is being sued by a woman in her twenties, an employee of a beauty salon in Dakar where he was going, according to him, to have a massage to relieve his back pain.
The city of Ziguinchor, of which Ousmane Sonko is the mayor and where he retired a few days ago, was plagued on Monday and Tuesday by clashes between the police and young supporters of the elected official. Unrest also took place in Dakar and elsewhere. The authorities reported three deaths, but the connection with the clashes was not clearly established.
Ousmane Sonko, president of the Pastef-les Patriotes party and third in the presidential election in 2019, has always claimed his innocence and shouted at the frame-up of power to prevent him from competing in the presidential election of 2024.
With AFP
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