A Senegalese court sentenced, Thursday, March 30, the opponent Ousmane Sonko to two months in prison suspended for defamation against a minister, a sentence which preserves his eligibility for the presidential election of 2024 according to his lawyers.
Mr. Sonko, 48, was to answer for "defamation, insults and falsehood" against the Minister of Tourism, Mame Mbaye Niang, during this trial under high tension, in a capital squared by the police and the gendarmes.
"With a two-month suspended sentence, Sonko remains eligible," two of his lawyers, Mes Bamba Cissé and Cheikh Khoureyssi Ba, told AFP.
No confirmation of this assertion was obtained elsewhere at first.
Behind this defamation lawsuit, it is indeed the declared candidacy of Mr. Sonko for the presidential election of February 2024 which is at stake. The texts in force provide for removal from the electoral lists, and therefore ineligibility, in certain cases of conviction for defamation.
The opponent, who came third in the presidential election in 2019, as well as his supporters cry out for the instrumentalization of justice by the power in place, which would seek to eliminate him politically and clear the way for the outgoing Macky Sall.
In addition to the two months in prison with the suspended sentence, the court sentenced Mr. Sonko, absent at the hearing, to pay 200 million CFA francs (300,000 euros) to the minister. He acquitted him of the offenses of insults and forgery.
The public prosecutor had demanded his sentence to two years in prison, including one firm, for defamation and forgery, and three months firm for insults.
Mr. Sonko's lawyers protested in vain against the refoulement, Wednesday by the Senegalese authorities at Dakar airport, of a new colleague recruited for the defense of the opponent, the Franco-Spanish Juan Branco.
Mr. Sonko announced on social networks that another of his counsel, Me Ousseynou Fall, had been suspended by the Bar Association.
"We blocked the defense, the lawyers who were supposed to come (...) It is clear that Senegal is no longer a rule of law," Cheikh Aliou Beye, a deputy from Mr. Sonko's party, told reporters. near the latter's home, the surroundings locked by a large police force.
