The public hearing is scheduled for this Friday, July 28, 2024. An unprecedented and sensitive case will therefore be judged today at the Dakar Military Court, ruling publicly and contradictorily in criminal matters. This is the trial of Warrant Officer I. Sagna, Staff Sergeant P. Badji, both serving in the 22nd Reconnaissance and Support Battalion (Bra), and that of Private 1st Class S. Coly assigned to the Train Battalion.
These two non-commissioned officers and this soldier were charged by the senior investigating judge with complicity in undermining state security, undermining national defense, endangering the lives of others, and plotting against state authority. They are accused of “collusion with the enemy,” that is, of having given sensitive and strategic information to the combat leaders of the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC).
The serious events allegedly took place in 2022 during a security operation in the south of the country carried out by units of the National Army. Equipped with ultra-modern means of communication in a war zone, company commanders managed to intercept conversations and other telephone numbers that gave the position of the soldiers.
Better, informs “Le Temoin Quotidien”, on the ground, staff sergeant P. Badji had tried to divert his section made up of around thirty men by indicating a route different from that which leads to the village of Djibidione. This while at that very moment, according to the accusation, armed Mdfc fighters were prepositioned on the “bad path” that Staff Sergeant P. Badji wanted his section to take. A clumsy maneuver which suggested that the accused wanted to lead his own men into an ambush.
Heard in substance by the senior investigating judge Oumar Maham Diallo, Sergeant-Major Badji denied the facts, specifying that he did not recognize the Sindia-Djibidione axis although he claimed to know the right way. These are practically similar facts that are reproached to the other accused, namely Warrant Officer I. Sagna and Soldier S. Coly. Because a well-conducted investigation made it possible to identify the three soldiers as being the “conscripts” and the “appellants” who disclosed to the MFDC fighters information relating to the positions of the Senegalese army in Casamance.
