DAKAR, Senegal
Senegalese opposition leader, Ousmane Sonko, detained since the end of July on various charges including calling for insurrection, announced on Tuesday that he was resuming his hunger strike which he had stopped at the beginning of September.
Candidate for the February
2024 presidential election, Mr. Sonko, 49, third in the 2019 presidential
election, accuses President Macky Sall, who denies it, of wanting to exclude
him from the ballot through legal procedures. Mr. Sall, elected in 2012 for seven
years and re-elected in 2019 for five years, announced in early July that he
would not run again.
“We can only resort to the
means of resistance that our current situation allows. This is why I have
decided to resume my hunger strike,” declared the opponent on his Facebook page
and X (ex-Twitter).
The politician wants this
decision to mark his "solidarity" with other activists "unjustly
arrested for having expressed their political opinions", detained, and
today deprived, for some, "of any contact with their loved ones" for
having led a hunger strike.
He also wishes to “protest
against (his) arbitrary and electoral detention, and that of hundreds of
patriots, and demand an end to it,” he wrote in his message. His resumption of
hunger strike was confirmed by Me Clédor Ly, one of his lawyers.
On Friday, a magistrate from a
district court in Ziguinchor (south) ordered that Mr. Sonko be reinstated on
the electoral lists from which he was removed, opening a new page in the
judicial saga which pits him against the State and has kept Senegal in suspense
for two and a half years.
This recovery would a priori
allow Mr. Sonko, imprisoned since the end of July after months of showdown with
the government and the justice system, to hope to compete in the presidential election.
But his candidacy is still far from guaranteed.
After a conviction for
defamation against a minister, Mr. Sonko was found guilty on June 1 of evil of
a minor and sentenced to two years in prison. Having refused to appear at
trial, he was convicted in absentia and removed from the list.
At the end of July, he was
imprisoned on other charges, including calling for insurrection, criminal
association in connection with a terrorist enterprise and endangering state
security.
He had started a hunger strike
which, according to those close to him, he ended on September 2 to respond to
calls emanating in particular from very influential religious leaders in
Senegal, after being admitted to the intensive care unit in a hospital.
The Senegalese authorities had
cast doubt on this hunger strike.
No comments:
Post a Comment