In Senegal’s presidential elections held on 24 March this year, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, 44, won a convincing victory for the opposition forces with 54 per cent of the vote. Former Prime Minister Amadou Ba of the ruling Alliance for the Republic coalition of outgoing President Macky Sall came in second with 35 per cent of his supporters.

These elections were preceded by a period of intense internal political struggle between Macky Sall’s ruling “democratic regime” and the opposition, linked to the March 2021 arrest of Ousmane Sonko, leader of the African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics and Fraternity (PASTEF) party, a member of parliament and third-place finisher in the 2019 presidential election with 16 per cent of the vote, on charges of defamation and insulting the Minister of Tourism.

The opposition saw his arrest as another attempt by President Macky Sall to eliminate a serious political rival for the 2024 presidential election and staged protests in many cities across the country. During the crackdown, dozens of protesters were killed, hundreds were injured and about 1,000 people were arrested.

Al-Jazeera’s latest investigations into these events, conducted in conjunction with the Qatar-based Causa Foundation, reveal that the Senegalese government, led by Amadou Ba, with close ties to Washington, used a special unit of the Senegalese police for this purpose.

As it turned out, the Rapid Reaction Group known as GAR-SI, formed and trained by Western specialists with EU money from among the Senegalese police to fight armed gangs, smuggling, human trafficking and other cross-border crimes on the Mali-Senegal border, was in fact also used to repress in Senegal the protests of the opposition party PASTEF led by Ousmane Sonko between 2021 and 2023. Amnesty International estimates that at least 60 people were victims of this repression.

Among the victims of this repression was President-elect........

© New Eastern Outlook