More than 40 people have been arrested in Senegal after police raided “reform centres” linked to an influential Muslim spiritual leader and opposition politician, the gendarmerie said in a statement.
More than 370 people were freed from the centres during raids carried out from Thursday to Saturday on the centres linked to Serigne Modou Kara Mbacké, the statement added.
The arrests were part of an investigation into alleged human and cannabis trafficking, as well as the theft of scooters, it said.
Mr Mbacké’s press office denied the accusations.
“The gendarmerie did not find drugs in any of the reform centres, [which take in] victims of drug addiction, young ex-convicts and the mentally impaired,” the AFP news agency quoted a statement as saying.
Mr Mbacké belongs to the Mouride brotherhood, a powerful Sufi Muslim order, and is also the leader of a political party.
The government should not “punish the group, and should instead offer help to the centres that had “succeeded where official structures don’t have solutions despite their budget of billions”, the statement said.
The gendarme said people lived “in deplorable sanitary conditions”.
Some were severely malnourished and had “visible signs of corporal abuse”.
Others “appeared to have lost their minds,” it added.
