Expelled Senegalese activist now in France

Kami Seba a ‘threat to public order’

Paris – A controversial West African activist expelled from Senegal for being a “threat to public order” arrived in France yesterday.

Kemi Seba, born in France to parents from Benin, was ordered to leave Senegal on Tuesday following an incident last month in which he burnt 5 000 CFA francs – a banknote worth R117 – in an anticolonial protest over “French Africa”.

Seba landed at Orly in Paris, where a reception committee of around 20 people awaited him, according to an airport source said.

Seba, whose real name is Stellio Capo Chichi, was acquitted by a Dakar court last week on the charge of destroying a banknote following a complaint by the Central Bank of West African States.

However, the Senegalese interior ministry took the decision to expel him, saying “his presence on national territory represents a serious threat to public order”.

The former leader of the Ka tribe – a group that was dissolved in 2006 in France, particularly for anti-Semitism – was arrested at his home in Dakar in August.

After spending five days in detention, Seba was released along with another member of his Urgences Panafricanistes movement who was held for providing him with a lighter.

The Dakar prosecutor’s office appealed against the decision, and a legal source told AFP on Tuesday that he is to be retried at a future date.

In a joint statement, three rights groups – the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the Senegalese League of Human Rights and Amnesty International Senegal – said they were “surprised” at the expulsion.

They denounced the “completely arbitrary procedure which violates the right to aid provided for people covered by deportation orders” and had asked the Senegal government to postpone the expulsion.

The CFA franc is pegged to the euro and used in eight West African countries in the region, six of which are former French colonies.

Seba is no stranger to brushes with the law, particularly in France where two groups he founded – Tribu K and Jeunesse Kemi Saba – were banned for “racist and antiSemitic” ideology. He has also acknowledged being friends with controversial French comedian Dieudonne who has been convicted for racist and anti-Semitic remarks. –