“The routine was quite difficult mentally,” testifies Frenchwoman Coline Fay, released after two months of detention

She was arrested on November 27 for demonstrating with the opposition.

After two months of detention in Senegal for demonstrating with the opposition, Coline Fay is free. She was deported to France on Friday January 19 where she landed at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport in the morning. She confides in France Bleu Isère. “The routine was quite difficult mentally”testifies the young 26-year-old physiotherapist from Claix, in Isère.

The Frenchwoman was arrested on November 17 after participating in a demonstration in support of opponent Ousmane Sonko. Having lived in Senegal for several months, she was accused, among other things, of “conspiracy against the authority of the State” and “acts or maneuvers likely to compromise public security.”

His parents and his brother Antonin were at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport on Friday morning to welcome him. “I’m fine, I’m in good health”, confides Coline Fay to France Bleu Isère. But she doesn’t feel completely liberated: “I am only half free, because I left the other activists who have been there for months”.

She says that “to sleep, I shared a single mattress with a pregnant woman for more than a month. The presence of the children also there, it’s a bit shocking to see them take their first steps in a house of “stop. The routine was quite difficult mentally. We went out to eat and came back to sleep. We have a lot of time to read and think, but it’s not easy.”

A heroine”

In detention, Coline Fay was nevertheless able to maintain contact with her loved ones, but “to make calls outside, we are tapped. There are lots of words we are not allowed to say but twice a week I could call my family for five to ten minutes”.

His liberation, “it’s not so much a relief as the end of extraordinary indecencyadds his lawyer in France, Juan Branco. This detention lasted two months too long. We were stunned by the way she was treated at every level. Coline Fay is a hero in many ways”he told France Bleu Isère.

According to the lawyer, Coline Fay “raised the image of France quite high. It showed that among the French people, there was very strong solidarity with the Senegalese situation.”

“We also have a thought for the 1,000 political prisoners still detained in Senegal.”

Juan Branco, lawyer for Coline Fay in France

at France Bleu Isère

Friday evening, Coline Fay will return to Isère: “We’re going to sleep, rest well. I am going to look for work and follow very carefully what will happen in Senegal in the coming days. We will also be very attentive to the position that France will take.”, she explains. A gathering will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday in Grenoble, in the presence of Coline Fay.