who is Juan Branco, the Franco-Spanish lawyer for opponent Ousmane Sonko?

3 mins

Juan Branco, 33, is about to be deported from Senegal to France. Arrested this weekend at the Mauritanian border, he was in detention in Dakar, charged in particular with attack, conspiracy, dissemination of false news, acts and maneuvers likely to compromise public security or cause serious political unrest.

The young Franco-Spanish lawyer made a name for himself in Senegal, taking part in the defense of opponent Ousmane Sonko, announcing in particular that he had seized the International Criminal Court (ICC) against President Macky Sall, for crimes against humanity, after the serious disturbances which caused at least sixteen deaths following the arrest of Mr Sonko.

Read alsoSenegal: Franco-Spanish lawyer Juan Branco imprisoned in Dakar

Juan Branco was not 30 when, in March 2019, his trial Dusk became a bookstore phenomenon, with nearly 100,000 copies sold. Rare fact, it appears in the editions Au diable vauvert after having had the same success on the Internet, where it has been downloaded in free access more than 100,000 times.

In the midst of the Yellow Vests movement, which the young lawyer has supported from the start, this pamphlet is a real political charge, very fair for some, caricatural and unfounded for others, against the links which unite, according to the author, economic leaders , media and politics.

In the forefront of which Emmanuel Macron and the figures of macronie, to which he devotes a real detestation. ” They’re not corrupt, they’re corruption “, he said in an interview in early 2019. Several macronists will pay the price, their personal lives being exposed in broad daylight, on the grounds that they would reveal “ proven reports of nepotism “.

Of Benjamin Griveaux, who will have to give up his candidacy for mayor of Paris for the presidential camp in 2020, after the publication of a sexual video on social networks by the Russian artist Piotr Pavlenski, of which Mr. Branco had become close. So close that the president of Paris will not allow him to defend him before the law, believing that he lacked the necessary distance to defend his client.

Read alsoSenegal: opponent Ousmane Sonko arrested by the gendarmerie outside his home

To Gabriel Attal, whose homosexuality he reveals and his relationship with an adviser to the Élysée, already on social networks at the end of 2018, the same day of the appointment to the government of the one who was his high school friend at the École alsacienne , a very prestigious private establishment in Paris.

Because Juan Branco, son of the famous Portuguese producer of arthouse cinema Paulo Branco, and the Spanish psychoanalyst Dolores Lopez, benefited from a privileged education and went through the greatest schools. A graduate of Sciences Po Paris and holder of four master’s degrees, he became a doctor in international law after a thesis at Normale Sup, on the ICC and mass violence, traveling to the Central African Republic in 2013, when the civil war was there. rage.

The native of Estepona, Costa del Sol, is therefore a young man in a hurry, certainly, but brilliant, and also attractive, while being judged “ megalomaniac, mythomaniac and very, very manipulative » by the socialist deputy Aurélie Filippetti, of whom he was the parliamentary collaborator at only 22 years old, before she became the Minister of Culture of François Hollande.

In 2015, Juan Branco was also legal adviser to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, starting to expose himself in the media. And in 2017, he ran for the legislative elections in Seine-Saint-Denis, for La France insoumise by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, before moving away from it, ” convincedhe said, that it is not inside the system that we will find the solution “.