Two Senegalese lawmakers, Monday, bagged six months each for assaulting a pregnant colleague during an acrimonious parliamentary session that degenerated into a full-blown brawl.
Along with getting the jail sentence, the men, Amadou Niang and Massata Samb of the opposition PUR party, were also ordered to pay a total of 5 million CFA francs ($8,200) in compensation for assaulting a female lawmaker Amy Ndiaye Gniby of the ruling Benno Bokk Yakaar coalition.
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During the Senegalese National Assembly’s debate on the budget of the Ministry of Justice on December 1, Massata Samb, a member of the Unity and Rally Party, slapped Amy Ndiaye, who was accused of making disrespectful remarks against a religious figure, PUR leader Serigne Moustapha Sy.
Moments later, Ndiaye was kicked in her stomach by another opposition lawmaker as she tried to throw a chair at the first assaulter. The woman was rushed to a hospital, where it was revealed that she was pregnant at the time when the two MPs had assaulted her.
Two days after a video of the fight circulated on the Internet, triggering outrage among Senegalese people, the President of the National Assembly demanded the arrest of the PUR MPs, with the majority calling for their immunity lifted in order to take responsibility for the assault.
The two lawmakers were arrested in mid-December, two weeks after they disappeared in the wake of their assault against MP Ndiaye, which took place during a heated parliamentary session.
In mid-December 2022, Senegalese police detained two opposition members of Senegal’s National Assembly, who were accused of assaulting their female colleague.
The loss was widely seen as a rebuke of President Macky Sall amid uncertainty over whether he will seek a third term in 2024, a move the opposition says would be in breach of term limits and of an earlier promise.
Sall, 60, has refused to state clearly whether he plans to run again.
(Reuters)
