In Senegal, a report by the Court of Auditors on the management of public finances under former president Macky Sall could see him facing charges, in a first for the country.
Senegal will summon former president Macky Sall to court after the west African country's audit office unveiled irregularities in the treasury's bookkeeping on his watch, a government spokesman said on Friday, 28 February.
Sall, who led Senegal from 2012 to 2024, is accused of having presided over "catastrophic" mismanagement of the public purse after an independent report invalidated official figures under his stewardship, revising both debt and the public deficit sharply upwards.
Sall, who has lived in Morocco since leaving office last year, has rejected the row over the report as "political".
Government spokesman Moustapha Sarre said Sall "could even be considered as the leader of a gang that committed criminal acts".
"Inevitably he will face justice. He is the person chiefly responsible for the extremely serious acts that were committed," Sarre told broadcaster RFM. "Legal proceedings cannot be avoided," he added.
Published on February 12, the audit office's report found accounting discrepancies such as a 2023 budget deficit of 12.3 percent - more than double the 4.9 percent announced under Sall.
"I don't give him any mitigating circumstances. Everything that happened, happened under his orders," said Sarré.
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President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who was elected president last March, has pledged a clean break from the Sall era.
Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko - a longtime opponent of Sall's - vowed last September to investigate what he said was "widespread corruption" under the previous administration.
Several former officials have been charged and imprisoned in recent months, including an MP close to Sall, on fraud and money laundering charges.
Amnesty law
The former president and members of his government could be tried for "high treason" before the High Court of Justice.
If charges are brought against Sall, it would be the first time that a former head of state would be brought to justice in the context of his former function since Senegal gained independence from France in 1960.
In late December, Sonko said his government would look at repealing a widely opposed law offering amnesty to those involved in the violence.
This amnesty law was introduced at Sall's behest just before the March 2024 election, which saw Sall replaced as president by Sonko's protégé Faye.
Following his re-election to a second term in 2019, Sall had left open the possibility of seeking a third mandate in 2024, provoking anger in Senegal. The country, widely considered a stable democracy in the region, underwent a period of deadly political turbulence, as Sall and Sonko locked horns.
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Political violence
The final months of Sall's presidency were marked by an unprecedented level of political violence. Between March 2021 and February 2024, 65 people were killed as protests against Sall erupted, according to recent figures.
The country's family minister Maimouna Dieye at the beginning of February gave a tally of 79.
"Sixty-five deaths have been recorded, including 51 killed by gunshots," said the CartograFreeSenegal collective, which said it had compiled the tally in conjunction with Amnesty International.
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A quarter of those killed were school children or students, and the average age of the victims was 26, with the youngest aged 14 and the oldest 53, the collective said.
"Justice, truth and reparation require that security forces allegedly responsible for excessive and illegal use of force during protests be prosecuted. The amnesty law constitutes an obstacle that must be removed by the current Senegalese authorities, as they pledged to do," said Marceau Sivieude, Amnesty International's interim regional director for West and Central Africa.
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'Manipulation'
For the former president's camp, the recent remarks from the government are "unacceptable".
"We cannot understand or accept that a government spokesperson would allow himself to call a former head of state a gang leader. It is unacceptable. It is inelegant. There is no substance, they are in populism," said Abdou Mbow, deputy spokesperson for the APR, Sall's party.
"They say things that make no sense, that manipulate the population. They must stop and know that when you are at the head of a country, you must have the shoulders to have restraint with regard to certain remarks," he added.
Sall's administration has never provided an official toll of those killed during the protests.
(with newswires)
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