Senegal: Dakar halts rights lobby boss' trip

Police authorities at the Leopold Sedar Senghor airport in Dakar have confirmed that they were preventing the secretary-general of the International Federation of Human Rights from entering the country. A statement issued by the rights group quoted the airport police as saying that Mr Paul Nsapu had been detained since Thursday. Since the beginning of the Arab upheavals, civil society and rights groups in Senegal have been facing difficult times with the regime of President Abdoulaye Wade over his bid for a controversial third mandate. Several rights activists have been beaten up, arrested and briefly detained during a string of public demonstrations that left scores injured and public and private property destroyed.