Exiled former Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade has made a controversial homecoming with security forces on high alert, two years after he lost office in an election marred by violent protests.
Wade, 87, who held power from 2000 to 2012, landed in Dakar late on Friday evening, his first time in the west African nation since he moved to France after a bitter defeat to arch rival and current leader Macky Sall.
His return - a show of support for his son Karim, who is in custody on multi-million-dollar corruption charges - had been delayed by more than 48 hours after his flight was grounded in Casablanca on Wednesday.
Wade has accused Sall's government of "manoeuvring" against him by deliberately withholding permission for him to land in Dakar in an attempt to disperse the supporters who had planned to welcome him.
"I understood a long time ago that Macky Sall did not want this day to happen," he told AFP in Morocco's largest city on Thursday.
Wade finally left Casablanca in the early evening on a private jet which landed in Dakar around three hours later.
Senegal has denied that it was behind the delay, with government spokesman Abdou Latif Coulibaly saying new paperwork held up the flight.
Wade had been expected earlier in the day, and his Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) was planning a march from the airport to its headquarters on his arrival.
But the area around the airport was sealed off by police and only a few PDS officials were allowed to welcome Wade.
The former head of state was due to deliver a speech at a rally to be staged in defiance of a ban by the authorities at the party headquarters, where a large crowd of supporters had been gathering for several hours, surrounded by riot police .
The media has described security forces as being in a "state of high-alert".
Anti-riot police have been deployed across Dakar since Wednesday, with protests banned over fears of "public disorder".
Wade has said that he does not intend to destabilise the Sall regime, but he has also vowed to press on with his outlawed party meeting.
Wade's son Karim, 45, has been on remand in Dakar for a year and is due to be tried in June.
Senegalese authorities accuse him of using corrupt means to acquire a fortune when he was a so-called "super minister" in his father's cabinet.
The younger Wade denies corruption.
