Lawyer Juan Branco summoned to testify as victim-witness in alleged kidnapping case in Senegal

The judge of the National Court (AN) Manuel García Castellón has summoned the French-Spanish lawyer Juan Branco as a victim-witness this Monday, who was allegedly kidnapped at the hands of parapolice units in Senegal in August 2023 as a result of the denouncing crimes against humanity in the country and for representing the leader of the opposition, Ousmane Sonko.

This is stated in a summons from the Central Court of Instruction number 6, to which Europa Press had access, and in which he sets his testimony at 10:00 a.m. It warns you that attendance is mandatory and that failure to appear may result in a fine ranging from 200 to 5,000 euros.

It was in March when García Castellón agreed that this testimony was necessary and asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the General Directorate of Spaniards Abroad and Consular Affairs for a report on the actions of the consular services in Mauritania and Senegal in relation to the detention.

In that order, also reported by this news agency, García Castellón agreed to what was requested by the Prosecutor’s Office, which maintains in its report that it would be up to the National Court to “know the facts reported to the Spanish jurisdiction, if these facts were classified as crime of terrorism committed against a Spanish citizen”.

It is, however, a “qualification that”, according to prosecutor Emilio Miró, “cannot be carried out at this initial moment of the investigation without the practice of procedures aimed at verifying the facts, their participants and the intended purpose.” the same”.

In the complaint, lawyer Aitor Martínez – who represents Branco – reports that his client was kidnapped in Mauritania “by an armed group without official insignia, with subsequent surreptitious transfer to Senegal by river or land when he was working legal work in his capacity as ‘assistant to counsel’ of the International Criminal Court, in relation to a complaint about crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Senegalese jurisdiction.”

“WHEREAGE UNKNOWN”

“The kidnapping in Mauritanian territory and subsequent transfer against his will to Senegal, being hooded, tied and mistreated throughout the transit, was carried out by a group of hooded and armed people, by land and river, following the direct instructions of one of the defendants, the head of the Criminal Investigations Division of the Dakar Police (Senegal), Adramé Sarr,” he maintains.

Sarr would be, according to the complaint, a “member of the police forces that had been denounced by Juan Branco before the Prosecutor’s Office of the International Criminal Court.”

The complaint itself, to which this news agency has had access, states that “during the entire time that the kidnapping and border transfer lasted, Branco was at an unknown location, hiding his kidnapping and illegal cross-border transfer from the Spanish consular authorities of Mauritania and Senegal, who had no information about the whereabouts of the Spanish citizen during the entire time that this transfer under kidnapping lasted.”