Dakar – Senegal’s public prosecutor on Wednesday urged a court in the capital Dakar to sentence the city’s mayor to five years in prison over his alleged connection to a 2011 fatal shooting.
Barthelemy Dias took office in the West African city of three million last month, despite being embroiled in a legal dispute over the killing of wrester Ndiaga Diouf.
The 47-year-old mayor is a fierce opponent of President Macky Sall’s, and an ally of leading opposition figure Ousmane Sonko.
In 2017, a court sentenced Dias and several others to two years in prison for their alleged role in Diouf’s death.
ALSO READ | Rebels promise to free seven Senegalese soldiers
The wrestler was shot dead while taking part in a 2011 attack on a town hall in one of Dakar’s municipalities of which Dias was then mayor.
It came during a period of heightened political tensions in the country.
Dias appealed his sentence, however, and hearings in the politically sensitive case were subsequently delayed several times.
On Wednesday, the state prosecutor asked the appeal court to sentence the mayor to five years in prison.
“I am being prosecuted for political reasons, not for judicial reasons,” Dias said on the stand.
To opposition supporters, the case fits a perceived pattern of prosecutions targeting Sall’s political rivals.
ALSO READ | EU seeks to deploy border agency to Senegal
Ousmane Sonko, for instance, was summoned in March last year to answer charges of rape that he accused the president of manufacturing.
The summons sparked several days of nationwide violence in which at least 12 people were killed, shocking a country considered to be a beacon of stability in a volatile region.
Sonko is viewed as one of the main contenders to replace Sall, 60, in the forthcoming 2024 presidential election.
‘I saw death’
Barthelemy Dias was mayor of the Dakar commune of Mermoz Sacre-Coeur in 2011, which was attacked amid growing protests against then-president Abdoulaye Wade, who was seeking a controversial third term in office.
ALSO READ | Senegal President Macky Sall urges Germany to stay in Mali
Dias told the court that he had acted in self-defence during the attack, and that he was not the only person to open fire.
The mayor also criticised the prosecution for failing to offer a ballistic analysis, which he suggested would prove he was not the shooter.
The assailants “had not come to give me an invitation card for a birthday party,” Dias said.
“I saw death,” he also told the court, adding: “fortunately for me, I am not a choir boy”.
Dias and Sonko both have tough-guy reputations in Senegalese politics.
However, public prosecutor Fatou Oumar Ndiaye argued that the shooting had not been defensive. Dias shot Diouf as assailants were leaving the town hall, she said.
She sought a five-year prison term for Dias as well as two co-defendants.
The court is due to rule on May 18, in a decision that has the potential to spill over into violence.
Dias supporters clashed with police on the streets of Dakar in November, as he was making his way to court for an earlier hearing.
He insisted Wednesday that he is not a criminal. “Dakar has three million inhabitants who did not elect a criminal mayor,” he said.
“I am mayor of Dakar and I will remain mayor of Dakar”.
Follow African Insider on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
Source: AFP
Picture: Twitter / @Face2faceAfrica
For more African news, visit Africaninsider.com
