The left-wing deputies who signed this letter addressed to the Head of State hope that the presidential trip “will not serve as a guarantee for the regime” in Benin.
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Some 75 left-wing deputies alerted President Emmanuel Macron, currently visiting several African countries including Benin, on Tuesday July 26 to “authoritarian excesses” in this country and the situation “alarming” political prisoners.
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“We would like to draw your attention to the political situation in this country”write the deputies in a letter to Emmanuel Macron, of which AFP has had a copy. “The situation of political opponents to the regime (of President Patrice) Talon [est] more and more alarming.”
This letter is on the initiative of the ecologist Hubert Julien-Laferrière, member of the Foreign Affairs Committee at the Assembly, and signed by elected officials and party leaders of the left-wing Nupes coalition such as the ecologists Julien Bayou and Sandrine Rousseau, the communists Fabien Roussel and André Chassaigne, the socialists Olivier Faure and Jérôme Guedj or even the insoumise Clémentine Autain.
The elected officials mainly evoke the convictions of the former Keeper of the Seals Reckya Madougou to 20 years in prison for “terrorism” and of the constitutionalist Joël Aïvo, to 10 years in prison for “conspiracy against the authority of the State” in mid -December 2021.
The lawyers of the former minister, arrested a few days before a presidential election in which her candidacy had been refused, had denounced judges “neither free nor impartial” who condemn “without evidence”. The French deputies, for their part, denounce “trial parodies”.