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Senegal has charged 71 men with “unnatural acts” as part of an intensifying crackdown on homosexuality, the public prosecutor’s office said late Friday, while 28 other defendants had charges against them dropped.
The men were brought before a court following a preliminary investigation, according to a statement from the prosecutor’s office.
Charges of “endangering the lives of others” and “wilful transmission of HIV/AIDS” were dismissed.
In March, Senegal passed a new law doubling penalties for homosexual relations, which are now punishable by five to ten years in prison.
Recent months have seen more than 100 people, including some local celebrities, arrested on suspicion of homosexual acts and in some cases of deliberately transmitting HIV, according to local reports.
Prosecutor Saliou Dicko told AFP on Saturday that a French national, an engineer in his thirties living in Dakar who had been detained since February for “unnatural acts”, had had the charges against him dropped.
The public prosecutor’s office has appealed the decision, Dicko said.
Senegal, a predominantly Muslim country in West Africa, has long criminalised homosexuality, but the new legislation significantly increased the maximum sentence from five to ten years.
The crackdown comes as several West African countries have enacted or strengthened laws criminalising homosexuality in recent months, reflecting a broader regional trend.
Human rights groups have condemned the legislation and the arrests, describing them as a violation of fundamental rights.
