On February 6, 2026, Falil Gadio, a reporter for the privately owned online channel Senegal 7, was arrested after his outlet broadcast his interview with a trader inciting unemployed young people to take up criminal activities as an alternative way of making a living following authorities’ eviction of vendors from an unauthorized market in the capital, Dakar.
“This message is not good,” Gadio told the interviewee in the video.
On February 9, Gadio was provisionally released, pending trial, after three days’ detention.
On February 11, a Dakar court tried and acquitted Gadio of charges of “provoking the commission of a crime and incitement to violence,” the journalist told CPJ.
Several journalists and news commentators have been arrested in Senegal since President Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye came to power in 2024, after promising to replace prison sentences for press offenses with fines.
CPJ’s calls to the Senegalese justice ministry in mid-February went unanswered.