APA-Dakar (Senegal) The criminal division of the Dakar court delivered its verdict on Thursday 1st June in the “Sweet Beauté” case.
Charged with rape and death threats since 2021, opposition leader, Ousmane Sonko was sentenced on Thursday to two years’ imprisonment for corruption of young persons and ordered to pay a fine of 600,000 CFA francs. He will also have to pay twenty million CFA francs in compensation to Adji Sarr, the plaintiff, who had claimed the sum of 1.5 billion CFA francs at the trial held on 23 May.
The judge followed part of the prosecution’s case, which called for the mayor of Ziguinchor (south) to be sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for rape or, if rape was not found, to five years’ imprisonment for “corrupting young person”.
Ndèye Khady Ndiaye, co-accused in this case and manager of the Sweet Beauté massage parlour, was sentenced to the same penalty as Mr. Sonko who came third in the last presidential election with more than 15% of the vote. She was found guilty of “incitement to debauchery”.
Ousmane Sonko did not take part in the judge’s deliberations, nor in the trial, which he boycotted in protest, in his words, against the violation of his rights by the Senegalese justice system. He has already described the case as a “political plot” designed to prevent him from standing in the February 2024 presidential election, denying all of Adji Sarr’s accusations.
During an eventful return to Dakar last week, after several days in Ziguinchor, he was apprehended by the gendarmerie, who then dropped him off at his home.
Access to his home has been barricaded ever since, leading to violent demonstrations by his supporters.
This case, which has kept observers on tenterhooks both in Senegal and abroad, has resulted in the deaths of at least twenty people since March 2021.
ODL/ac/lb/abj/APA