Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye has pardoned journalist René Capain Bassène, who had been serving a life sentence for his alleged role in the killing of 14 loggers in the Bayottes forest in Casamance (a southern region almost entirely separated from mainland Senegal by The Gambia, and long home to a low-level independence rebellion). Bassène, who spent much of his career reporting on the conflict between the Senegalese government and the separatist Casamance Movement of Democratic Forces (MFDC), was convicted over the January 2018 massacre despite the MFDC denying involvement and a subsequent court acquitting one of his co-defendants in 2024. The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomed the pardon, saying its review of court documents revealed a severely flawed investigation in which some defendants were coerced into implicating Bassène, describing his conviction as "a grave miscarriage of justice."