Senegal: Disappearance of two gendarmes, what does the investigation reveal?

Following the disappearance of two Senegalese army intelligence officers on Saturday 19 November, the public prosecutor announced the opening of a judicial enquiry. Initial indications are that the two gendarmes were engaged in “a fishing expedition”.

The Senegalese army has already been in turmoil for a week. According to a press release from the Prosecutor’s Office of the Dakar High Court, two intelligence agents have been missing since Saturday 19 November. The persons concerned are Chief Warrant Officer Didier Badji of the Gendarmerie, on duty at the General State Inspection, and Sergeant Fulbert Sambou of the Military Intelligence Directorate.

In view of the increasingly worrying situation, the public prosecutor’s office announced that it had opened an investigation on Tuesday 22 November. According to the first information revealed by the latter, “the geolocation of the devices of the missing persons made it possible to locate them consecutively at the level of the rocky cliffs of Cap Manuel where a stretched fishing net, remains of shrimp bait as well as shoes belonging to the aforementioned persons were also found”.

The same source indicates that the investigation has been entrusted to the Gendarmerie in order to “elucidate the precise circumstances of these disappearances”, and reassures that “already, the investigation units as well as the Fire Brigade and the National Navy have been engaged in the search for the said persons, who are for the moment only missing”.

In any case, it should be noted that a lifeless body was found in the area according to some media. But for the moment, the families of the missing persons have not yet been called for identification. The latter were in front of the press on Thursday, expressing their concerns about this mysterious disappearance. The two agents all come from the Bliss Kassa islands in Casamance, in the south of the country, precisely from the village of Niomoune. “We, the inhabitants of Niomoune and the Bliss Islands and relatives of the disappeared, demand that the state shed light on this affair. We do not want a second François Mancabou,” Vieux Oumar Diatta was quoted by Walf Group as saying.