The deposed deputy, councilor of the capital officially dismissed on Friday December 13 by the Senegalese state, spoke of an appeal against this decision, before being interrupted by a police intervention at city hall.
“No one can remove me from this position until my right of appeal is exercised,” Barthélémy Dias, the mayor of Dakar, officially dismissed by the Senegalese state that same day, told the press on Friday, December 13. due to a homicide conviction. He did not detail either the type of appeal envisaged or with which institution.
The declaration of the councilor, a national political figure, was interrupted by police officers who broke down the door of a room at the town hall where he had planned to hold a press conference. The police entered and removed the people who were there, including municipal councilors and journalists. “The police are carrying out a political order,” denounced Barthélémy Dias. “It’s dictatorship,” he then declared.
The coalition which invested Barthélémy Dias “condemns with the greatest firmness the arbitrary decision aimed at pronouncing [sa] resignation,” in a press release published Friday. She denounces “the brutal, scandalous and unjustified incursion of the police into Dakar city hall” and specifies that “the mayor has ten days to appeal the decision” of the prefect. The police did not comment on their intervention in the town hall, located in downtown Dakar.
Final conviction
In the morning, the decree of the prefect of Dakar, dated December 11 and confirmed by those close to Barthélémy Dias, was published on social networks. “I declare you resigned from your mandate as municipal council of the City of Dakar, from the date of notification” of the measure, he indicates.
The dismissal procedure was initiated by a supporter of power, who contacted the prefect of Dakar regarding the final conviction of Barthélémy Dias to two years in prison, including six months, for a homicide in 2011 in a context of violence policies. This sentence, pronounced in 2017, confirmed on appeal in 2022 and validated by the Supreme Court in 2023, results in a five-year ineligibility sentence, according to a document from the prefecture.
The revocation of the title of municipal council automatically entails that of mayor of Dakar, said two experts on texts on local authorities in Senegal. The ministry responsible for local authorities did not respond to AFP’s requests on the subject on Friday. The mayor of Dakar “received” the documents informing him of his dismissal as municipal councilor, a week after being stripped of his post as deputy, a member of his entourage said on Friday, without commenting.
Barthélémy Dias declared on December 9 that he would resist possible attempts by the new government to strip him of his mandate as mayor of the Senegalese capital. The National Assembly stripped him of his parliamentary mandate on November 6 at the request of the Ministry of Justice due to his conviction for homicide.
(Jeune Afrique with AFP)
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