Conviction Islamic institutions and contexts Quranic-school and daara systems Thiénaba, Thiès, Senegal · 2021

Senegal: marabout convicted after four talibés died at his unregistered daara

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

Quranic teacher (marabout) running a boarding daara

Organization

No organization assigned

Spiritual nexus

The boys were talibés boarded under the marabout's total custodial and spiritual authority in the daara tradition; they depended on him for food and could not leave — the conditions that led them to forage the seeds that killed them.

Guru or spiritual-teacher authority
Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2021-01-01 · conviction and sentence

Tribunal, Thiès region, Senegal. Marabout Moussa Seck, who ran an undeclared and uninspected daara boarding fourteen talibé boys, was convicted of endangering the lives of others after four boys of about eleven died from ingesting toxic seeds they had foraged under conditions of neglect and malnutrition. He received a three-month suspended sentence — a disposition the reporting itself records as symbolic.

Documented coercion mechanisms

total custodial and spiritual authority over boarded talibés
dependence on the marabout for food

Primary record

Sources

national newspaper court reporting verdict and sentencing report 'Quatre talibés morts à Thiénaba: le maître coranique condamné', DakarActu (2021), corroborated by SeneNews and Walf.: Senegalese press reporting the conviction for endangering the lives of others and the suspended sentence after the four deaths.

Related record

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