After the arrest, a month ago, of more than forty men in Senegal for alleged homosexuality—a wave of arrests that has unsettled human rights defenders—a woman is now being charged in a separate case with “an act against nature.”
This concerns Bigué Diop, alias Mame Dior, one of the lead actresses in the hit television series “Beté Bété.”
According to her lawyer, it all began with a defamation complaint filed by her client: Bigué Diop filed a complaint after TikTok videos accusing her of theft. She was summoned to the gendarmerie on March 26 in connection with this matter, and the actress learned that she herself was being arrested, as she faced theft charges. Her phone was seized and searched.
Another accusation then emerged: acts deemed “against nature.”
This weekend, the judge ultimately indicted the actress Bigué Diop, alias “Mame Dior,” in two files: the theft case in which the actress is accused of involvement in criminal associations and money laundering and is placed under judicial supervision; and the “acts against nature” case, which refers to alleged homosexual relations for which she is placed under an electronic monitoring bracelet.
The actress’s lawyer, Ouseynou Ngom, rejects all of the charges and says he is “shocked” by the appearance of a new indictment after the search of his client’s phone was carried out “in violation of the law,” he asserts: “The 2008 Cybersecurity Law regulates the search of telephones. […] These provisions were not respected.”
Finally, note that Attorney Ouseynou Ngom plans to request the dismissal of the charges before the Chamber of Accusation.
