APA-Dakar (Senegal) – The new Senegalese authorities are planning a policy aimed at combating “the excessive use of force”.
Six members of the Pikine police station in the Dakar suburbs have been remanded in custody, according to the daily Liberation on Monday 8 April. They are implicated in the death of Seydina Mouhamed Diop, a 33-year-old man who died in hospital from his injuries on the night of 24-25 March.
According to witnesses, the victim was first arrested by the police before being taken to the Technopole, an uninhabited site in Pikine, where he was allegedly beaten. According to the autopsy performed by a
forensic pathologist at Dakar’s main hospital, Seydina Mouhamed Diop died as a result of “metabolic and haemodynamic complications from polytrauma with displaced fractures of the posterior ares of the 4th
and 9th ribs, pulmonary contusions, and gluteal region with significant haemorrhagic infiltration, trauma to the left elbow.”
In addition, the specialist “noted multiple skin abrasions and progressive pulmonary tuberculosis” on the body.
The death of Seydina Mouhamed Diop sparked violent protests in Pikine, where young people blocked off the town’s main roads for several hours. They then set fire to a bus belonging to the public transport company, ‘Dakar Dem Dikk.’ The six police officers involved were arrested in the days that followed and taken into custody by their colleagues from the Criminal Investigation Division, who were in charge of the investigation initiated by order of the public prosecutor.
Elected on 24 March 2024 as the 5th President of Senegal, Bassirou Diomaye Faye last Friday appointed two generals, Jean-Baptiste Tine and Birame Diop, to head the Ministries of the Interior and the Armed Forces respectively.
With these officers, the new Head of State intends to implement a new law and order policy to put an end to blunders by the security forces, after around 80 people lost their lives during political demonstrations between 2021 and 2024 under his predecessor Macky Sall.
In particular, the programme proposes the establishment of an “autonomous authority responsible for investigating cases of excessive use of force by the forces of law and order (police and gendarmerie) and cases of corruption.”
ODL/ac/fss/as/APA