A French radio journalist was arrested on Tuesday in Senegal’s southern Casamance Province and bundled off to the capital Dakar as fellow journalists looked on.
”I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know what I’m being accused of,” Sophie Malibeaux told AFP before climbing into an all-terrain vehicle that was to take her to the airport at Ziguinchor, the Casamance capital.
Malibeaux, who works for Radio France Internationale and has been in the west African country for more than a year, was in Ziguinchor to cover an annual meeting of the separatist Movement of Democratic Forces in Casamance (MFDC).
Three agents in civilian clothes presented her with a police summons and told her she was to be escorted to Dakar ”for the purposes of an investigation whose subject was not revealed,” one of the other journalists said.
A police source said: ”I received an order from my superiors in Dakar to make her available to officials of the Division of Criminal Investigations for the purposes of an investigation.
There’s no need to dramatise this.”
The MFDC has been fighting for independence from the rest of Senegal for more than 20 years.
The group’s annual meeting, scheduled to end on Wednesday, is being held in the absence of some the more radical members, including backers of the late historic leader Sidi Badji, who died in May last year.
Since the MFDC launched its rebellion 21 years ago, hundreds of people have been killed and thousands have fled their homes. In recent years, many attacks have been acts of banditry rather than secessionist activity. – Sapa-AFP