René Capain Bassène, only sentenced to life imprisonment in the case of the Boffa-Bayotte killing, has just undergone a new legal setback. The Court of Cassation, seized after the confirmation of his sentence by the Court of Appeal on July 27, 2024, rejected his appeal, thus definitively confirming the decision rendered at first instance on June 13, 2022.
An expected but painful outcome for the investigative journalist, who still hoped, through this final procedure, obtain the cancellation of his heavy sentence. But the decision rendered this Thursday by the high court now closes all the internal judicial doors in Bassène. Faced with this news, man does not intend to remain silent. According to prison sources, he immediately announced the launch of an unlimited hunger strike. “I will enter into diet and that no one comes to ask me anything,” he said in a message transmitted from his cell, reaffirming his protest posture in the face of what he considers an injustice.
This is not the first time that René Capain Bassène has chosen this radical form of protest. Already last month, in the middle of Lent, he had started a hunger strike after having published a letter-confidence from prison, denouncing the conditions of his imprisonment and demanding a revision of his trial. He had then been dissuaded to continue his diet by the personal intervention of Mgr Jean-Baptiste Valter Manga, bishop of Ziguinchor.
