Beninese justice released on Wednesday, the day of French President Emmanuel Macron's visit to Cotonou, thirty opponents arrested during the April 2021 presidential election which had been marred by violence, AFP learned from a judicial source.
The Court for the Suppression of Economic Crimes and Terrorism (Criet)
"released and placed under judicial control this afternoon thirty people arrested for offenses committed during the electoral period"
, a source close to the prosecution told AFP.
Among those freed are leaders and young activists of the opposition Democrats party, party vice-president Noureini Atchadé confirmed to AFP.
Democratic decline
“There is in particular one of our vice-presidents in the person of Paulin Dossa, the former minister Houdou Ali and the young militant and activist Nadine Okounmassou”
, he specified.
This release comes at the time of President Emmanuel Macron's visit to Cotonou, who met President Patrice Talon in the middle of the day.
During a joint press conference, the President of Benin affirmed that there were no
"political detainees"
in Benin, answering the question of a French journalist asking him whether he intended to release two opposition figures sentenced at the end of 2021 to heavy prison terms.
“I am straight in my boots”
, declared the Beninese president,
"acts of pardon or amnesty"
in the future.
President Macron made no mention of condemnations or democratic backsliding in the West African country during his public statements, despite numerous calls from human rights organizations and part of the opposition French and Beninese.
The two heads of state, however, claimed to have addressed political issues during their private exchanges, without giving further details.
Since his first election in 2016, President Talon has launched all-out political and economic reforms with a view to setting his country on the path to development.
But this modernization has also been accompanied by a significant democratic decline, according to the opposition, reduced to almost nothing today.
Patrice Talon was re-elected in 2021 after an election campaign marred by violence, when no major opposition party had been allowed to present candidates.
Demonstrations had broken out in the center of the country, and were repressed in blood.
Subsequently, dozens of opponents were arrested across the country.
Among them, two great figures: the former Keeper of the Seals Reckya Madougou sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment for "terrorism" and the constitutionalist Joël Aïvo, sentenced to ten years in prison for "conspiracy against the authority of the State" in December 2021.
