Senegal: ten years of imprisonment required against opposition leader Ousmane Sonko
Opposition leader Ousmane Sonko in Ziguinchor on July 3, 2022. AFP - MUHAMADOU BITTAYE
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
In Senegal, all eyes were turned until the middle of the night to the Dakar court where the trial of the political opponent Ousmane Sonko, absent from the dock, prosecuted for rape by a former massage parlor employee was taking place. The candidate for the presidential election of 2024 denounces a plot of the power to remove him from the political game. A little after three o'clock in the morning, on May 24, the prosecutor requested against him 10 years in prison for rape and 5 years for corruption of youth, as well as five years and one year in prison for Ndeye Khady Ndiaye, the owner of the massage parlor, guilty of complicity in rape and incitement to debauchery. The deliberations are expected on June 1.
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With our correspondent in Dakar, Théa Ollivier
In his red dress, Adji Sarr returned to the operation of the Sweet Beauty salon, explaining the different types of massages such as body-body where the client and the masseuse are naked.
The young woman then described in detail the repetitive rapes she said she had suffered. "He took me by force... I didn't say anything because I was scared," she says in a calm and detached voice.
A version contradicted by Ndeye Khady Ndiaye, the manager of the salon, who is accused of complicity in rape. "Adji Sarr never told me that she was being raped in my institute, I would have done everything to protect her," says the boss who found herself without her lawyers at the bar, all left at midday after the rejection of their request to postpone the hearing.
>> READ ALSO: The opponent Ousmane Sonko absent at a hearing of his trial for alleged rapes
Political conspiracy?
After the witnesses passed between twenty o'clock and midnight, Adji Sarr's lawyers held oral arguments. At the heart of the debates: the medical certificate and the virginity of Adji Sarr, the presence of sperm in his genitals or the course of the day she filed a complaint.
Opposite, the lawyers of Ousmane Sonko, who denounce a political conspiracy, could not plead without the presence of their client. Tried in absentia, Ousmane Sonko will not be able to appeal and risks losing his civil rights and therefore no longer being eligible for the 2024 presidential election.
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- Senegal
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