Senegal: Briefly Sympathetic

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One might say that things were rigged in advance when ex-Premier Mamadou Dia went on trial last week for attempting to seize power in December. After all, six of the seven "judges" were members of the National Assembly that Dia had tried to dissolve by force during the abortive coup. They just might be a little prejudiced. But when the proceedings began, the court was careful to observe all the flowery decorum of Gallic justice. The presiding judge was resplendent in ermine-trimmed long red robes, and sat listening with calm dignity. Moreover, Dia was not even charged with "plotting," only with the more vague "acting against the internal security of the state." Taking the floor in his defense, Dia argued that he was not guilty. When he sent gendarmes to overthrow President Leopold Senghor and arrest pro-Senghor Deputies, Dia said, he was only trying to head off a plot against himself that stemmed from his efforts to crack Senegal's peanut monopolists. Cried Dia: "I wanted a constitutional solution, they [Senghor's men] wanted a political one." In reply, the prosecutor sounded downright sympathetic. There were extenuating circumstances, he agreed; Dia was obviously a misguided patriot who "thought that one could not be a good Senegalese when one was against Mamadou Dia." But at week's end the court gaveled an end to courtliness. After two hours and 15 minutes of deliberation, the justices sentenced Dia to the maximum penalty, life imprisonment.