2023-07-11 23:51:59
The parliamentary group of the Yewwi Askan Wi (Yaw) coalition reacted after its president Birame Souleye Diop was placed under arrest warrant. He was charged by the Dean of judges, Maham Diallo, for acts likely to compromise public peace, an offense to the President of the Republic, according to his lawyer Me Moussa Sarr.
Here is the full press release!
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« The parliamentary group Yewwi Askan Wi learned of the placement under a warrant of arrest of President Birame Souleye Diop following his hearing by the Dean of the investigating judges on July 11, 2023. He is charged with acts likely to compromise the public peace and offend to the Head of State. Summoned by the police and placed in police custody for almost a week for remarks made during the press conference of the Yewwi Askan Wi coalition on July 04, 2023, Birame Souleye Diop had nevertheless publicly apologized with responsibility and grandeur. . Despite this honorable amends, President Birame Souleye Diop suffered the intolerance and intransigence of punitive and instrumentalized justice. Claiming an imaginary diplomatic incident and a crime of lèse-majesté worthy of divine right monarchies, his file was artificially aggravated to open a judicial investigation, while the flagrante delicto was obvious.
This unconstitutional, arbitrary and abusive detention outrageously violates Article 61 of the Constitution and the Internal Regulations of the National Assembly, which guarantee the deputy parliamentary immunity. Article 61 of the Constitution provides in particular that “a member of the National Assembly may not, out of session, be arrested except with the authorization of the Assembly, except in the case of a flagrant crime or offence, as provided for by the preceding paragraph or a final criminal conviction. The prosecution of a member of the National Assembly or his detention as a result of this prosecution is suspended if the Assembly requires it”.
How then to explain the opening of a judicial investigation without the authorization of the National Assembly?
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This discriminatory legal treatment against only opponents seems to be becoming commonplace. This crime committed against the president of the first group of the parliamentary opposition adds to the long list of arbitrary arrests and detentions of deputies of this 14th legislature, all of Yewwi Askan Wi (Massata Samb, Mamadou Niang, Guy Marius Sagna, Cheikh Thioro Mbacké, Alphonse Mané Sambou, Bakary Diédhiou, Samba Dang, Birame Souleye Diop already on May 31, 2023).
The parliamentary group Yewwi Askan Wi denounces with the utmost energy these intolerable attacks on universal suffrage, the right to oppose and the status of the deputy who is dishonored and stripped of his quality of representative of the people.
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This double standard in the exercise of prosecutions, placements in police custody and preventive detention make Senegal one of the countries with the largest number of prisoners of conscience and political detainees exclusively from the opposition. . Our country also leads in the unenviable record of the number of MPs arrested for offenses related to their opinions or their participation in peaceful protests.
The parliamentary group demands the immediate release of President Birame Souleye Diop, because the latter as deputy mayor presents all the guarantees of representation. President Birame Souleye Diop is an elected representative of the people, recognized for his great moral and managerial qualities, who must continue to freely serve the Senegalese in the National Assembly and in his commune. If he must submit to justice and the law, nothing justifies his detention, if not political ambitions and an unacknowledged desire to disturb parliamentary order. This relentlessness, this abusive intolerance and this excessive severity towards the deputies of Yewwi Akan Wi are an ostentatious sign of the will of the regime of Macky Sall to pursue its disastrous and anti-democratic objective of “reducing the opposition to its simplest expression » . Through these maneuvers and schemes, the hawks of the regime are trying to foster discord and tumult within the National Assembly to tarnish the image of this institution.
Consequently, the parliamentary group asks the National Assembly, on the basis of Article 61 of the Constitution, to request the suspension of the prosecution and detention of President Birame Souleye Diop.
No to the criminalization of deputies and the judicialization of the National Assembly.
PARLIAMENTARY GROUP YEWWI ASKAN WI
July 11, 2023″
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