APA-Dakar (Senegal) – This move by the Public Prosecutor’s Office comes about ten days after President Macky Sall, who announced the postponement of the presidential elections originally scheduled for 25 February, declared his intention to launch an inclusive national dialogue.
Several activists who had been detained for several months on various charges related to their political activities in Senegal were released on Thursday. They were granted provisional release.
Moussa Sarr, the lawyer defending 25 of them, told the state news agency APS that the decision to release them had been taken by the prosecutor who had originally ordered their detention.
Members of the disbanded Pastef party of opposition figure Ousmane Sonko, who has been detained for several months after being convicted by a Dakar court, and well-known activists are on the list of those released. They include religious leader Oustaz Assane Seck, rapper Mor Talla Gueye (aka Nitdoff), Jamil Sané, mayor of a Dakar suburb, Aliou Sané, coordinator of the civil movement Y’en A Marre, and others.
The prosecutor’s move comes around ten days after the Head of State, Macky Sall, announced the postponement of the presidential elections, originally scheduled for 25 February, declaring his intention to launch an inclusive national dialogue based on “a pragmatic process of appeasement and reconciliation in order to preserve peace and consolidate the stability of the country.”
Sall justified his decision to postpone the elections, in which he had promised not to stand, even though he is about to complete his second and constitutionally final term in office, by allegations of corruption on the part of members of the Constitutional Council, which had just examined the candidacies of 93 presidential candidates but had only validated 20.
In his televised speech on 3 February, President Sall promised to organise “an open national dialogue to create the conditions for free, transparent and inclusive elections in a Senegal that is at peace and reconciled.”
Two days later, the National Assembly voted on a bill setting 15 December as the date for the next presidential election, after the gendarmerie expelled some deputies who had opposed the postponement of the vote following disturbances in the parliamentary precincts.
LOS/lb/abj/APA