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fullscreen Senegalese President Macky Sall. Archive image. Photo: Sylvain Cherkaoui/AP/TT
Senegalese President Macky Sall has announced an amnesty for people imprisoned during political protests since 2021.
The country is in the middle of a major political crisis, after Sall decided to postpone the elections that were supposed to be held on February 25.
In recent weeks, thousands of Senegalese have protested the decision to postpone the election, and protesters and police have clashed in several cities. Senegal’s Constitutional Court has ruled that the president’s actions are illegal and annulled the decision.
Since 2021, several hundred opposition figures – or over 1,000 according to some human rights organizations – have been arrested in the power struggle between opposition leader Ousmane Sonko and the incumbent government.
The decision on amnesty, which must first be voted through by Senegal’s parliament, takes place “in a spirit of national reconciliation”, according to the president.
– This will make it possible to create peace in the political arena, he says.
Hundreds of jailed opposition figures have already been released in the past ten days. But Ousmane Sonko and his party’s Pastef presidential candidate Bassirou Diomaye Fay are both still in prison.
Senegal has never experienced a military coup since independence from France in 1960, making it an outlier in a region plagued by recurring coups.