Seven men have been jailed for six months in Senegal.

The men were caught having sex during a raid, police told a court in Dakar.

According to a BBC report on 22 August, the mother of one of the accused told the authorities her son was gay, but did not show up as a prosecution witness at the trial.

Defence lawyer Abdoul Daff was quoted as saying that the mother’s failure to appear in court should have caused the case to collapse.

‘There was neither material evidence nor testimony in order to corroborate the claims,’ he said.

Under the laws of the west African country, where the population is more than 95% Muslim, ‘acts against nature’ are illegal and punishable by up to five years in prison and fines of up to US$2,500.

Last month, well-known Senegalese journalist Tamsir Jupiter Ndiaye was sentenced by a Dakar court to six months in prison for gay sex.

In 2014, a gay couple in Dakar was sentenced to six months’ jail in what was said to be a rare conviction of a gay couple on criminal charges after after neighbors alerted police to their home.