René Capain Bassène was arrested in 2018 and received a life sentence on June 13, 2022, for complicity in murder, attempted murder, and criminal association over the January 6, 2018, killing of 14 loggers in the protected forest of Boffa Bayotte in Senegal’s Casamance area. The Court of Appeal in Casamance’s main city of Ziguinchor upheld Bassène's sentence in August 2024, according to a copy of the judgment, reviewed by CPJ.
As of late 2024, the journalist, who has written three books on the Casamance conflict, which began in 1982, was detained in Ziguinchor prison awaiting a hearing date for his Supreme Court appeal, Bassène's family told CPJ.
Bassène was finalizing his fourth book when several masked gendarmes arrested him at home on the night of January 14, 2018.
Prosecutors accused him of being the "planner" and "instigator" of the loggers’ killings, citing his phone calls with rebels on the day of the killings. Bassène, who spoke to CPJ by phone from prison between September to December 2024, told CPJ that the calls were part of his research, following public reporting of the murders on the radio that evening. He said an event of this magnitude would certainly be included in the book he was writing at the time.
Among those he called was César Atoute Badiate, a faction leader in the separatist Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC), to ask if his men were behind the killings.
Badiate was also given a life sentence in 2022, along with Bassène, but remains at large. CPJ was unable to reach Badiate.
Bassène also told CPJ that he received a call from MFDC member Oumar Ampoï Bodian, who initially received a life sentence for the killings but was acquitted in the 2024 appeal. Bodian told CPJ that he had called Bassène, an expert on the region, to ask what had happened in the forest.
Bassène's legal team contested the allegations about the journalist’s calls with the rebels, but their request for transcripts was refused.
The prosecution also said that geolocation data from Bassène’s phone placed him at the scene of the crime and that he met with Badiate and neighboring villagers to plan the killings, according to copies of judicial documents reviewed by CPJ, including interview records and the investigation file. Bassène has denied these allegations.
Odette Victorine Coly, Bassène's wife, told CPJ that Bassène spent the day of the murders near their home in Ziguinchor’s Kandialang neighborhood, some 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from the killings.
Three of Bassène’s neighbors told CPJ that they saw and spoke to the journalist in Kandialang that day. Two declined to be named, citing fear of reprisals. The third, Alain Diédhiou, said that Bassène watched him play a football match that afternoon and the journalist had his phone with him throughout.
At least 25 people were arrested in connection with the killings, but virtually all were acquitted. Seven told CPJ that they were forced to implicate Bassène or to sign inaccurate interview records.
One of them, Ibou Sané, secretary general of Toubacouta village, which is near the forest, told prosecutors and gendarmes that Bassène phoned him on January 6, according to the prosecution’s investigative file.
Sané told those officials that he planned and participated in the killings with Bassène and Bassène called him that evening to report what had happened, the file said.
Sané told CPJ that he had "only known René in prison” but a gendarme pointed a gun at his head and forced him to admit that he knew Bassène. On another occasion, gendarmes ordered him to sign the interview record, which included things he did not say.
A relative of Sané told CPJ on condition of anonymity that he gave Sané's number to the journalist after the killings because Bassène was looking for information and "had no contact in Toubacouta."
The prosecution also alleged that Bassène was a member of the MFDC communications team and sent about 21 emails, in this capacity, to Ousmane Tamba, an exiled member of MFDC’s political wing who owns the news website Journal du Pays and is close to Badiate.
Bassène denied sending the emails and being a member of the MFDC communications team. The court refused his request for an expert opinion on the emails.
In one of the emails in the court file, it appeared that Bassène had identified himself as part of the MFDC’s team in written responses to questions about the conflict from Journal du Pays on December 4, 2017. CPJ, using the digital archiving tool Wayback Machine, found that the interview was published at least three months earlier and cited Bassène as a journalist, writer, and observer of the conflict.
Journal du Pays told CPJ via its official email address in 2018 that Bassène was an experienced journalist and specialist on the Casamance conflict who gave “dozens of interviews” to their outlet.
In court, Ciré Clédor Ly, one of Bassène's lawyers, also questioned the authenticity of an email allegedly sent in February 2018, a month after his client was detained.
In November 2024, Tamba declined to respond to CPJ’s written request for comment, sent via Bodian, saying he was "not involved in any way" in the case.
Bassène told CPJ that he had lost hearing in his right ear after being beaten during interrogation by gendarmerie and problems with his eyesight from wearing a tight blindfold for many hours following his arrest. Medical documents reviewed by CPJ and interviews with four people detained with Bassène corroborate the journalist’s description of his health concerns.
Bassène did not appear in CPJ’s previous prison censuses because research initially could not confirm that his detention was connected to his journalism. However, CPJ’s subsequent review of court documents found that prosecutors had cited Bassène’s journalistic work before and after the killings in arguments for his conviction.
CPJ sent a letter to the Senegalese gendarmerie in December 2024 but had not received a response ahead of publication of its annual census report.