Massacre de Thiaroye: l’archéologue Moustapha Sall dévoile les premiers résultats des fouilles
During the press conference of the Committee for the Commemoration of the Massacre of the Senegalese Riflemen, this Friday, October 17 at the Mamadou Dia administrative building, the president of the Archaeology Commission, Professor Moustapha Sall, unveiled the first results of the excavations carried out on seven skeletons exhumed from the Thiaroye military cemetery.
"The truth about what happened in Thiaroye lies in the ground, because everything is buried there," the archaeologist said.
Professor Sall explained that the work of the archaeologists aimed firstly to compare the certainties from the archives and to dismiss certain theories put forward by the French authorities.
He also stressed that several sites have been identified, but the Thiaroye cemetery remains the focus of research, particularly around the question of the 34 graves supposed to cover the riflemen killed on December 1, 1944.
For him, the excavations aimed to verify whether these graves actually corresponded to the burials of the massacred soldiers. Initial findings revealed that the current graves are not contemporary with the burials. "The skeletons are not found inside the graves. In some cases, they are outside the square, sometimes even with their heads turned away from the stele," said Professor Sall, emphasizing that the cemetery is a "receptacle of several burial practices that can reflect several types of massacre."
Archaeological excavations conducted in May unearthed seven skeletons. Among them, the first three attracted attention.
"The first individual, about 1.80m tall, wore boots, rings, and had remains of iron chains around his shins. The second body only preserves half of the spine and pelvis, and the third, for its part, lacks a skull and part of the ribs, with a bullet lodged in the left chest," explained Professor Sall.
For Mr. Sall, these discoveries are essential. "The seven exhumed skeletons must be the subject of a physical anthropological study and a genetic study by extracting the DNA of these individuals to know who they are," he said.
Bernadette Seynabou Faye
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