Benin: an agronomist faces a year in prison for a publication mentioning Ibrahim Traoré

The defendant, held in preventive detention, appeared for electronic harassment and incitement to violence, two offenses provided for by the Benin Digital Code. He is accused of having written on his personal page, “We need Ibrahim Traoré in Benin,” referring to the captain who came to power in Burkina Faso following the October 2022 coup.

The post was reported by several Internet users to the National Center for Digital Investigations (CNIN), which referred it to the special Public Prosecutor’s Office at CRIET. The agronomist was arrested, placed in police custody, and then brought before the Public Prosecutor, who ordered his placement in preventive detention before his transfer to the court.

At the hearing, the defense pleaded for acquittal, requesting the benefit of the doubt and challenging the charge of incitement to violence against his client. The Court adjourned the case for deliberation. A verdict is expected in June 2026.

The case comes amid a tightening of the regulation of digital speech in Benin, where several Internet users, journalists and opponents have been prosecuted in recent years under the Digital Code adopted in 2018. The CRIET, the specialized court created in the same year, is regularly seized of such cases.

In Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, the successive military coups between 2020 and 2023 gave rise to a pan-Africanist anti-Western rhetoric, of which the figure of Captain Ibrahim Traoré has become, on West African social media, one of the most widely shared symbols.