Photo Credit: Courtesy
Ousmane Tounkara

America will be held responsible or whatever derives from it if she extradites a Senegalese political crusader on the false pretexts leveled against him by the dubious Senegalese government.

We’re talking of the activist Ousmane Tounkara currently in the custody of the US immigration services following a politically motivated denunciation by the rogue, regime now unfortunately misruling Senegal.

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Should this happen, it would be a huge blunder, a scar on whatever America has ever stood for when it comes to believing in human rights values.

Let me indeed be crystal clear: albeit a fiery person, Tounkara is no terrorist. He may have just verbally overstated and overstretched his political rhetoric.

Under the US First Amendment provisions, his right to speak out should always be protected on the American territory.

Sending him to the Senegalese government is paramount to having him tortured and even assassinated.

America needs to know that the sad truth in Senegal is that real terrorists, involved in drug trafficking, money-laundering and other criminal activities, are those parading as officials in this government’s ecosystem.

I have experienced first-hand their criminal drives.

I was arrested and jailed just to prevent me from exercising my constitutional rights to express in writings and air my opinions on Senegal’s burning issues, starting from but not limited to widespread corruption, electoral theft, trampling of human rights, etc.

In this tragic light I know too well and can legitimately testify why Senegal has now turned into a dangerous state.

It makes sense therefore, to hereby urge the Biden Administration, whether Tounkara’s immigration status is clear or not, to refrain from heeding these illegal, fake, crooked calls of the corrupt regime to extradite this adversary.

You need to know that all the ploys against him and his likes are doctored by a Nazi-like regime destroying the democratic fabric of a hitherto flourishing African democracy.

Extraditing Tounkara will be an American crime. It would amount to associating America with a regime that deserves only to be tracked and condemned for its many crimes.

Doing so would send the worst signal to a world expecting a different one from her shores.

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Adama Gaye is an author, a former hostage of the Senegalese government, and a Graduate US Foreign Policymaking Studies, University of Maryland