Beninese pan-Africanist Kémi Séba arrested in Paris

The Beninese pan-Africanist Kemi Seba, known for his virulent anti-Western positions and stripped of French nationality in July, was arrested on Monday October 14 in Paris, we learned on Tuesday from a source close to the case. Real name Stellio Gilles Robert Capo Chichi, the former leader of the Tribu Ka, a small group which claimed anti-Semitism and advocated separation between Blacks and Whites before being dissolved by the French government in 2006, was condemned several times in France for inciting racial hatred.

The reason for the arrest has not been specified at this stage. Aged 42, he is now the head of the Pan-Africanist Emergencies group and has a certain aura on social networks. Since the beginning of August, he has had a Niger diplomatic passport issued by the junta in his capacity as special advisor to the head of the military regime in power in Niamey, General Abdourahamane Tiani. He himself announced on his Facebook page that he had obtained this passport, explaining: “in response to the procedure for forfeiture of my nationality committed by Françafrique against me (the unacknowledged objective of which was to try to limit my movements , and thus slow down the scope of (his) anti-colonialist actions)”, the Head of State of Niger “decided to grant me the diplomatic passport, given the fight that I have been waging for 25 years for Africa, this at the risk of my life.

In recent years, Kemi Seba has organized or participated in several demonstrations hostile to the CFA franc in Africa, during which he was regularly arrested, expelled or turned back, notably from Ivory Coast, Senegal and Guinea. In France, he was accused last year by Renaissance MP Thomas Gassilloud, then president of the Defense Committee of the National Assembly, of being a “relay of Russian propaganda” and of serving “a foreign power which fuels anti-French sentiment.