Senegal: Pedophile ring allegedly linked to a French national dismantled

The Senegalese National Police arrested 14 people linked to a child exploitation ring operating between Senegal and France, authorities said Sunday. Senegalese law enforcement confirmed that this operation is part of an investigation launched in France that led, last April, to the arrest of Pierre Robert, a 73‑year‑old French citizen arrested in a case related to child pornography images.

According to a police statement quoted by AFP, the investigation led to the "dismantling of a transnational criminal group," whose members acted in coordination between the two countries. Within this network, four of the accused allegedly acted on Robert's orders, in exchange for receiving money transfers.

The detainees were charged with "organized pedophilia, pimping, rape of minors under 15 years of age, sexual acts with persons of the same sex and intentional transmission of HIV/AIDS." All are Senegalese nationals.

As part of the operation, police conducted searches in several neighborhoods in Dakar and in the town of Kaolack, located about 125 miles southeast of the capital.

A terror network

According to the Le Parisien, Pierre Robert had created a network of contacts within the male-to-male prostitution environment in the African country since 2017, with the aim of attracting very young boys to turn them into compliant sexual partners. The French national also allegedly asked his intermediaries to infect the recruited minors with HIV, so that they would have no "escape route."

It is estimated that many of the victims were street children entrusted to Koranic schools, particularly vulnerable because they are forced to beg alone. The official document cited by AFP further notes that the network would have forced minors to engage in "unprotected and recorded sexual acts" with "mostly HIV-positive" men.

Among the most shocking elements of the investigation, revealed by Le Parisien, Robert would have planned to create "sex schools" to "train" very young children (from 3 to 15 years) in sexual practices, with the aim of constituting a "nursery" for him and possible clients, as well as to organize kidnappings of minors in Senegal and Morocco.