DAKAR, Senegal — A lawyer for embattled Senegalese opposition chief Ousmane Sonko filed a felony grievance in a French court docket on Thursday and likewise known as for the International Criminal Court to analyze the Senegalese authorities’s latest lethal crackdown on protesters.
The 168-page doc accuses President Macky Sall and others of “crimes against humanity.” It comes within the wake of lethal protests earlier this month, sparked by felony costs towards Sonko that critics imagine had been politically motivated.
The court docket submitting, which was introduced at a information convention on Thursday in Paris, particulars 50 deaths since March 2021. It names Senegal’s president, inside minister, the pinnacle of police, together with greater than 100 different Senegalese and French officers, as being complicit in “politically motivated violence against unarmed demonstrators, activists, journalists, lawyers and ordinary citizens.”
“This fits all the criteria of the ICC of crimes against humanity in terms of gravity, in terms of jurisdiction,” stated Sonko’s lawyer, Juan Branco, in an interview with The Associated Press.
Branco, who compiled and introduced greater than 600 items of proof within the official grievance, beforehand represented WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and members of the Gilets Jaunes motion in France.
Senegal’s authorities didn’t instantly launch a response to Thursday’s court docket submitting, however authorities have denied that police actions have amounted to extreme power.
Branco cited a number of causes for submitting the grievance in France, together with the truth that a number of of the folks harmed by the federal government response had been twin residents of France and Senegal. The transfer can also be supposed to bypass what they see as a corrupt justice system in Senegal.
“These are the jurisdictions that the people we’re targeting fear,” Branco stated.
Sonko’s crew stated that it’s hopeful the ICC prosecutor will take the case significantly given the energy and scope of the proof.
“We really expect him to open immediately a preliminary examination on the case of Senegal,” Branco stated. “And we think he has sufficient evidence at this stage to actually go to the pretrial chamber and ask to open an investigation.”
Sonko, lengthy seen as the best political risk to Senegal’s ruling get together in subsequent 12 months’s presidential election, now faces disqualification after being handed a two-year jail sentence earlier this month following his conviction on costs of corrupting youth.
In one other case introduced towards him, the opposition chief was acquitted on costs of raping a girl who labored at a therapeutic massage parlor and making demise threats towards her.
Authorities have stated that Sonko can ask for a retrial as soon as he’s imprisoned. An arrest warrant hasn’t but been issued and it’s unclear when he may be taken into custody.
Sonko’s supporters keep that the authorized woes are a part of a authorities effort to derail his candidacy, and his conviction provoked demonstrations all through the West African nation.
Sonko, who positioned third in Senegal’s 2019 presidential election and is widespread with the nation’s youth, additionally has known as on the incumbent president to state publicly that he received’t search a 3rd time period in workplace. But Sall hasn’t but completed so.
Sall, who’s in Paris this week to fulfill European officers at a local weather finance convention, has hinted at – however not confirmed – that he’s inquisitive about one other time period, which critics say can be unconstitutional.
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