(Updates with prison sources)
Dakar, Aug 17 (EFE).- The Senegalese opposition leader and presidential candidate, Ousmane Sonko, has been admitted to the intensive care unit of a Dakar hospital after 19 days on a hunger strike to protest his imprisonment. preventive on July 31, his party and prison sources reported today.
“Sonko is admitted to the intensive care unit of the Main Hospital of Dakar as a result of a malaise that came upon him yesterday afternoon,” the opposition party, the Senegalese Patriots for Labour, Ethics, said in a statement. and the Fraternity (PASTEF).
PASTEF, dissolved on July 31 by the Senegalese government after accusing it of calling for an insurrection, recalled that Sonko is on his nineteenth day of hunger strike this Thursday, initiated to protest his arrest.
“President Macky Sall, his Minister of Justice, his Minister of the Interior and all those involved in this inhumane persecution, which have ended up endangering the life of the opposition leader, will be fully responsible for everything that happens,” the president said. game.
“We call on our militants, supporters and all the Senegalese people to rise up and demand the immediate and unconditional release of President Sonko, his family and all political detainees,” he added.
As an anonymous prison administration official told the state Senegalese Press Agency (APS) today, Sonko was admitted this Thursday around 4:00 a.m. (same GMT) “as a precautionary measure, to prevent him from going into a coma.”
The aforementioned source indicated that the opponent “is weak”, but that “he is still lucid” and “accepts medical care.”
Already on the 6th, PASTEF announced Sonko’s emergency hospitalization and then blamed “Macky Sall and his regime fully.”
The opponent is accused, among other charges, of having called for an insurrection, of attacking State security and of criminal association in relation to a terrorist company.
The popular opponent has denounced the “instrumentalization” of justice by Sall to prevent him from running in the next elections, scheduled for 2024.
Known for his “anti-system” speech, Sonko criticizes bad governance, corruption and French neocolonialism and has a strong following among the country’s youth. EFE
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