In Senegal, the civil society platform F24 has been calling for several months for the release of a little over a thousand people arrested, according to it, during the riots of last March and June. She advocates for the possibility for these detainees to be able to vote in the 2024 presidential election, because keeping them in detention would deprive them of the vote, which would distort the result of the election.
2 mins
With our correspondent in Dakar, Léa-Lisa Westeroff
It is impossible to have a precise figure, but of the 27,000 prisoners in Senegal approximately 45% are in pre-trial detention, according to several lawyers. The slowness of a judicial system which lacks resources and personnel is often singled out and the absence of a legal text which governs the duration of pre-trial detention.
For its part, the F24 platform estimates that a little more than a thousand people arrested during the riots of March and last June are still awaiting trial. In the absence of conviction, these people are still in possession of their right to vote, as F24 coordinator Mamadou Mbodj explains:
“ A person in preventive detention is in principle a person presumed innocent. And so from the moment a person is not convicted, that person has the right to exercise their right to vote. We believe that leaving them in prison, without trial and without them voting, is also a way of distorting the vote and it is a way of violating the fundamental rights of citizens, and this is unacceptable in a democracy. . »
In a press release, the civil society platform therefore calls on the State to take anticipatory measures to guarantee these thousands of defendants the right to vote – if they are registered on the electoral lists.
The F24 which also encourages Senegalese citizens to massively withdraw their voting cards to exercise their right to vote next February.