Lawyers of Detained French Lawyer Juan Branco Call on France and Spain to Intervene

MADRID, 6 Ago. (EUROPA PRESS) –

The lawyers of Juan Branco, the French lawyer of Spanish origin who represents the Senegalese opposition leader, Ousmane Sonko, and who is currently detained in the African country, have asked France and Spain to intercede for his release, understanding it as contrary to the law. International.

Branco was arrested this past Saturday at the border with Mauritania when he was trying to leave Senegal, a country he entered last week illegally and despite the international arrest warrant requested against him by the Senegalese authorities.

Senegal accuses Branco of “attacks against the State” as a result of a brief presented by the lawyer before the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the political violence unleashed by the Senegalese authorities against the opposition leader and his supporters during the last two years.

Branco, who entered Senegal to participate in a forum in which he insisted on his attacks against the country’s Prosecutor’s Office and denounced his submission to the Executive led by President Macky Sall, ended up detained at dawn in the border city of Rosso, who was trying to cross disguised as a fisherman across the Senegal River.

“We have been informed of the handing over of our comrade Juan Branco to the Senegalese authorities by the Mauritanian authorities, despite the fact that he had traveled to this country regularly and with a view to escaping the political persecution that he had been promised in Senegal.” , have lamented their lawyers, François Gibault, Luc Brossolet, Alexandre Ursulet and Robin Binsard in a statement collected by the Senego news portal.

“No lawyer should be harassed for the exercise of his profession, wherever he is in the world. It is the safeguarding of defense rights that is at stake. The legal battle led by our colleague Juan Branco for his client does not justify in in any way the political persecution to which he is subjected,” they added.

Ultimately, his lawyers promise to “exercise all appropriate legal resources to put an end (…) to a pure and simple instrumentalization of the penal code for political purposes” and ask “all the French, Spanish and, of course, Senegalese authorities to react to allow the release of Juan Branco”.

Senegalese leader Ousmane Sonko is currently being detained once again after an altercation that occurred last week with a group of agents who, according to the opposition, were recording him at his home, and for inciting the insurrection by posting on social networks a message before his arrest in which he called for popular resistance.

His party, Patriots of Senegal (Pastef) and its supporters denounce that Sonko’s arrest is a new episode in the long political persecution of which he is being a victim by the authorities. A previous arrest of the opponent led to protests by his followers in mid-May that resulted in 15 deaths and significant material damage.