“The decision ordering the expulsion of Sidiya Bayo is motivated by his subversive activities,” the Senegalese minister for Interior and Public Security, Abdoulaye Daouda Diallo was quoted as saying. “This is an administrative measure to condemn his subversive activities that we cannot accept.”
Mr Sidiya Bayo was arrested by the Senegalese authorities since Saturday, and placed under detention at Dakar Central Police.
“We received an official notification from the Senegalese authorities that my client Bayo will be expelled in the coming hours from Senegal,” his lawyer, Assane Dioma Ndiaye, has confirmed.
It is not clear when Bayo would be put onboard a France-bound flight amid opposition from human rights groups in Senegal. Assane Ndiaye Dioma Abdoulaye Bamba Tine, a human rights activist is said to have filed an application at the Senegalese Supreme Court, calling for the cancellation of Bayo’s expulsion order.
Born in France to Gambian parents, Bayo leads a political grouping, the National Transitional Council of The Gambia, which was formed in 2012 in Senegal where he has been resident for several months. He has constantly threatened to remove President Jammeh from power by violent means. In the days leading to the State House attack, he issued several statements published in mainstream Senegalese and dissident Gambian online newspapers, calling on Gambian soldiers to rise against the democratically elected government of President Jammeh.
Meanwhile, reports monitored elsewhere in the United States have it that two of the plotters, who have made it back to the US Monday appeared before a US Federal Court. Messrs Papa Faal, a veteran US army of Gambian descent and Cherno Njie, a US-based Gambian businessman, who was to be the interim leader, have not yet entered their plea.
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