Senegal: three people sentenced to life for the Boffa Bayotte massacre

These villagers had been arrested following the massacre of fourteen loggers found dead on January 6, 2018 in the classified forest of Boffa Bayotte, south of Ziguinchor not far from the border with Guinea-Bissau.

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1 min

In Senegal, it was a long-awaited verdict in the case of the Boffa Bayotte massacre, which shocked the whole country at the time.

On January 6, 2018, 14 woodcutters were killed in this classified forest in Casamance, in the south of the country.

The High Court of Ziguinchor sentenced this Monday, June 13 three people to life imprisonment.

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With our correspondent in Dakar,

The case of the massacre of woodcutters in

resurfaces.

On Monday, rebel leader César Atoute Badiate, journalist René Bassène, and Oumar Ampoï Bodian, presented as a member of the independence movement MFDC, were sentenced to life imprisonment by the Senegalese courts.

Except for Mr. Badiata, who was tried in absentia and remains under an arrest warrant, the other convicts therefore remain in detention.

The three men

on 14 counts including criminal association, participation in an insurrectionary movement and complicity in assassination.

Two other defendants in this case receive a six-month suspended prison sentence for possession of weapons without authorization.

The other ten were acquitted.

During the trial, the prosecutor had requested life imprisonment for eleven of the defendants.

To justify its decision, the prosecution considered that the assassination of the woodcutters in Boffa Bayotte was a  

”.

Maître Ciré Clédor Ly, one of the defense lawyers, regretted a “

” decision and a “

”.

He said he appealed.

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