A Senegalese appeals court on Thursday upheld a life sentence handed to a journalist over a 2018 massacre in the southern Casamance region but acquitted another man.

Fourteen loggers were rounded up and killed in January 2018 by armed individuals in the Bayotte forest in Casamance.

The region is separated from the rest of Senegal by The Gambia and an independence campaign has rumbled on for more than 35 years.

A court in Ziguinchor, Casamance’s main city, upheld a life term for journalist Rene Capain Bassene, his lawyer Cire Cledor Ly told AFP.

Bassene denies the charge. He was convicted for “criminal conspiracy, complicity in murder and attempted complicity in murder”.

His lawyer told AFP that he had “immediately lodged an appeal”.

The court acquitted Omar Ampoi Bodian, a member of the Casamance Movement of Democratic Forces (MFDC) rebel group, who had also been sentenced to life imprisonment.

Bodian was “acquitted with the benefit of doubt on all counts” and will be released from prison, Ly said.

Both men, who have been in prison since January 2018, had been charged with murder and armed insurrection.

During the appeal hearing in July, the prosecution had asked for the sentences to be upheld.

Cesar Atoute Badiate, a leader of a military faction of the MFDC who was tried in absentia and is still on the run, also got a life term in June 2022 for murder and armed insurrection.

Sixteen people were charged with armed robbery, murder, hostage-taking, kidnapping, armed insurrection and criminal conspiracy.

Eleven were acquitted; two were given six-month suspended prison sentences, while the three others got life terms.

After claiming thousands of victims and devastating the economy, the intensity of the conflict in Casamance has now greatly diminished.