Senegal arrests Ghanaian accused of child sex abuse

Senegalese officers have arrested a Ghanaian man suspected of "paedophilia, rape and corruption of minors" and accused of abusing several children, the police said on Thursday.

Police were alerted to an "imminent risk of a lynching" as the man was being attacked by an angry crowd accusing him of abuse, a police statement said. Officers arrested him on Wednesday in Jaxaay, a suburb of the capital Dakar.

The revelation comes just weeks after the Senegalese government urged communities to work to tackle child sex abuse, cases of which have regularly shaken the west African country.

According to witness statements gathered from the alleged victims, aged between seven and 10 years old, the suspect lured the children under the pretext of playing video games and gave them small amounts of money or sweets in exchange for their silence.

Police said that the father of one of the alleged victims stumbled on his son "sitting on the suspect's lap in a bedroom".

"Questioned on the spot, the individual tried to justify this intimate physical contact by claiming he was teaching the child how to use a video game console," the police added.

Another alleged victim "formally stated that she had been subjected to sexual penetration on the very day of the police intervention", the statement said.

Investigations are ongoing to identify all of the children believed to be victims, the police added.

In recent years, the Senegalese press has frequently reported on cases of the abuse or murder of children, notably by family members or within schools, especially some Islamic educational establishments.

In June 2023, a Quranic teacher suspected of raping 27 of his schoolgirls in the central Senegalese city of Touba was arrested after several weeks on the run.