A lawyer acting for former Senegalese prime minister Idrissa Seck said on Monday that his client was ready to fight allegations of overspending on a roads programme.
After a 90-minute meeeting with Seck, Boucounta Diallo said his client, who is in jail in Dakar, was ” full of humour, ready to face the accusations aimed at him and to fight”.
After being questioned by police for eight days about allegations he misused â,¬32-million $38-million) of state funds for roadworks in his stronghold of Thies, Seck was charged on Saturday with being ”a threat to national defence and to
state security”.
But Amadou Sall, a lawyer for the state, said on Sunday that a High Court made up of eight parliamentarians and two judges would follow up the Thies roadworks affair.
It would ”probably” meet next week and call for Seck, mayor of Thies, to be formally charged over the roadworks affair, Sall said.
It emerged on Monday that three other people have also been charged with being threats to national defence and state security.
They are the director of a mineral water company, who also manages properties in a seaside resort, and his wife, and a secretary employed by them. Seck’s legal team say they do not know why Seck is being accused of threatening state security.
He was sacked as prime minister in April last year and is considered by observers to be president Abdoulaye Wade’s main rival in the 2007 presidential election.
His lawyers have said he has been the target of trumped-up charges to eliminate him from the political field.
Sall rejected those allegations.
”The officers have discovered acts and various manoeuvres likely to constitute a threat to the security of the state and endanger the republic,” he said. – Sapa-AFP