Kemi Seba, recherché par le Bénin, arrêté en Afrique du Sud
At the head of the NGO called "Pan-African Emergencies" and known for his radical diatribes against France and the African powers allied with Paris, he was arrested on Monday, along with a son, for "alleged acts of facilitating illegal entry into Zimbabwe via the Limpopo River", according to the statement from the South African police.
Kemi Seba, whose real name is Stellio Gilles Robert Capo Chichi, has 1.5 million subscribers on social media and is being prosecuted in Benin for "apology for crimes against state security and incitement to rebellion".
Born in France and Benin, he was stripped of his French nationality in 2024 and supports military regimes in the Sahel that came to power through coups, regimes hostile to Paris and close to Russia. The Nigerien junta granted him a diplomatic passport.
According to South African police, the father-son duo intended to continue their journey to Europe from Zimbabwe. Their court appearance has been postponed until April 20, 2026, and they have been remanded in custody pending extradition proceedings, the statement said.
The arrest took place in a Pretoria shopping center where Kemi Seba was apprehended in the company of a facilitator, who had received 250,000 rand, or about 13,000 euros, to help him cross the border.
In Benin, mutinous soldiers appeared on television on December 7, announcing that they had overthrown President Patrice Talon. In reality, he, defended by the Beninese army, had never been arrested, and the coup was thwarted that same day with the support of Nigerian and French allies.
On that day, Kemi Seba hailed in a video "the day of liberation" of his country. A staunch opponent of Patrice Talon, he had been briefly detained in 2019 and 2023 during visits to Benin.
In October 2024, Kemi Seba was taken into custody in France on suspicion of "links" with the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, then released, although the investigation by the Paris prosecutor's office was still ongoing recently.
He was questioned in particular about suspicions of "maintaining intelligence with a foreign power (...) of a nature to harm the fundamental interests of the nation".
A year earlier, several media outlets had published the Wagner Leaks, resulting from a hack of internal documents from the Wagner paramilitary group, which indicated that its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, since deceased, had financed and guided some of Kemi Seba's actions in Africa between 2018 and 2019.
Benin is among six new states listed by the American organization Freedom House as having engaged in transnational repression practices, according to a report published Thursday.
With Patrice Talon unable to run again after two terms, his Finance Minister Romuald Wadagni, the majority candidate, was elected with an overwhelming 94% of the vote in Sunday's presidential election.
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