Portrait

Senegal: who is Juan Branco, the Franco-Spanish lawyer of the opponent Ousmane Sonko?

Released under judicial supervision, he is about to be expelled from Senegal. Back on the turbulent career of Me Juan Branco, a young French lawyer with radical positions, who has already made a lot of talk about him in France, before appearing in the Ousmane Sonko case.

Juan Branco, at the Palais de Justice in Paris, in 2020. AFP - LIONEL BONAVENTURE

Text by: Eric Chaurin Follow

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Juan Branco, 33, is about to be deported from Senegal to France. Arrested this weekend at the Mauritanian border, he was in detention in Dakar, charged with attacks, conspiracy, dissemination of false news, acts and maneuvers likely to compromise public security or cause serious political unrest.

The young Franco-Spanish lawyer has made a name for himself in Senegal, taking part in the defense of the opponent Ousmane Sonko, announcing in particular to have seized the International Criminal Court (ICC) against President Macky Sall, for crimes against humanity, after the serious unrest that left at least sixteen dead after the arrest of Mr. Sonko.

We came here to Dakar to tell you that we were not afraid. pic.twitter.com/bs0EKUNi2Q

— Juan Branco ✊ (@anatolium) July 30, 2023

" READ ALSO Senegal: the Franco-Spanish lawyer, Juan Branco, imprisoned in Dakar

Juan Branco was not 30 years old when, in March 2019, his essay Twilight became a bookstore phenomenon, with nearly 100,000 copies sold. Rarely, it is published by Au diable vauvert after having enjoyed the same success on the Internet, where it has been downloaded in open access more than 100,000 times.

In the midst of the Yellow Vests movement, which the young lawyer supported from the beginning, this pamphlet is a real political charge, very fair for some, caricatured and unfounded for others, against the links that unite, according to the author, economic, media and political leaders.

In the first rank of which Emmanuel Macron and the figures of Macronia, to whom he devotes a real detestation. "They are not corrupt, they are corruption," he said in an interview in early 2019. Several Macronists will pay the price, their personal lives being exposed in broad daylight, on the grounds that they would reveal "proven reports of nepotism".

Benjamin Griveaux, who will have to give up his candidacy for mayor of Paris for the presidential camp in 2020, after the publication of a video of a sexual nature on social networks by the Russian artist Piotr Pavlenski, with whom Mr. Branco had become close. So close that the president of Paris will not allow him to defend him before the law, considering that he lacked the necessary distance to defend his client.

With @vincent_niore, we recall the sanctity of the rights of #Défense. No lawyer should be hindered from his mission, wherever he or she may be. We are concerned about the situation of our colleague, Juan Branco, who is imprisoned in Senegal. We are actively acting to...

— President of Paris (@batonnierparis) August 6, 2023

" READ ALSO Senegal: the opponent Ousmane Sonko arrested by the gendarmerie in front of his home

To Gabriel Attal, whose homosexuality and his relationship with an adviser to the Élysée he revealed, already on social networks at the end of 2018, the same day of the appointment to the government of the one who was his high school classmate at the Alsatian School, a very prestigious private institution in Paris.

Because Juan Branco, son of the famous Portuguese arthouse film producer Paulo Branco, and the Spanish psychoanalyst Dolores Lopez, benefited from a privileged education and went through the greatest schools. A graduate of Sciences Po Paris and holder of four master's degrees, he became a doctor of international law after a thesis at Normale Sup, on the ICC and mass violence, making a trip to the Central African Republic in 2013, while the civil war was raging there.

The native of Estepona, Costa del Sol, is therefore a young man in a hurry, certainly, but brilliant, and also attractive, while being considered "megalomaniac, mythomaniac and very, very manipulative" by the socialist deputy Aurélie Filippetti, of whom he was the parliamentary collaborator at only 22 years old, before she became the Minister of Culture of François Hollande.

In 2015, Juan Branco also served as legal adviser to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, beginning to expose himself in the media. And in 2017, he ran in the legislative elections in Seine-Saint-Denis, for Jean-Luc Mélenchon's La France insoumise, before moving away, "convinced, he says, that it is not within the system that we will find the solution".

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• Senegal
• France
• Spain
• Justice