Ex-President Yahya Jammeh, who ruled the Gambia from
1996-2017, has been accused of ordering the killing of 59 West African
migrants, including nine Nigerians.
According to a statement by Human Rights Watch, testimony
before Gambia’s The Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC)
implicated the former president in the killings.
Jammeh, who has lived in exile in Equatorial Guinea since
his departure from the Gambia in January 2017, has been accused of human rights
abuses, including extrajudicial killings, torture, and arbitrary detention.
TRRC was set up by President Adama Barrow, his successor, to
investigate the allegations against him.
The group said from February 24 to March 11, 2021, witnesses
told the TRRC that migrants bound for Europe from Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana,
Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo, including their Gambian
contact, were held by Jammeh’s top lieutenants in the security services before
being murdered by the “Junglers,” a notorious paramilitary unit that took
orders directly from the ex-president.
It said witnesses, including the country’s former chief of
defence staff and former senior officers of its National Intelligence Agency
(NIA) testified that Ousman Sonko, the then former police chief, informed
Jammeh during a national ceremony on July 22, 2005 that a large group of
migrants had been apprehended on a beach near Barra, across the river from
Banjul, the capital.
“One of those men was Paul Enagameh of Nigeria, whose
brother, Kehinde Enagameh, was among those killed, according to a Nigerian investigation
carried out in 2008,” it said.
After allegedly speaking with Jammeh, Sonko was said to have
instructed officers to ferry the migrants, who were suspected of being
mercenaries, to the naval headquarters in Banjul.
All the Gambian security chiefs were said to have then
converged on the naval headquarters, as did several Junglers, who beat and
kicked the migrants and “treated them like animals”.
“Several officers said that it was already clear that the
men and two women were migrants and not mercenaries, as they carried no weapons
or anything suspicious. The migrants were then allegedly distributed to various
detention centers around Banjul,” the rights group added.
“The exposed bodies of the first group of eight migrants
were found the next morning, July 23, 2005, near Ghana Town, a settlement of
Ghanaian descendants in Brufut, just outside Banjul.
“Amady Jallow, the then-crime management coordinator,
testified that the bodies showed signs of bad beatings, their skulls broken in,
blood and brains oozing out”.
Jallow reportedly said he was informed years later by
another police officer that an additional nine Nigerians had been buried in a
mass grave near the place he saw the exposed bodies.
‘ORDER TO EXECUTE WAS FROM JAMMEH’
According to the statement, the TRRC said in July 2019,
three former Junglers, all serving members of the Gambian National Army,
testified that they and 12 others carried out those killings on Jammeh’s
orders.
They also listed a series of assassinations they carried out
on Jammeh’s orders and said they “never operated on anything that is their own
orders or will, all the orders come from the top (Jammeh)”.
Although the exact number of migrants killed is still
unclear, Gibril Secka, director of operations at the NIA, presented a list of
51 migrants the police counted at one station to including nationals of Ghana
(39); Sierra Leone (3); Côte d’Ivoire (2); Senegal (2); Togo (2); Liberia (1);
Nigeria (1 – John Amase), and Congo (1).
The number omits some migrants who have previously been
identified, as well as eight other Nigerians arrested and killed.
JAMMEH’S GOVERNMENT TRIED TO COVER UP CRIMES
The commission alleged that Jammeh tried to cover up his
crimes.
“Former chief of defense Staff Assan Sarr said that when a
UN/ECOWAS investigation team came in 2008, he was told by then-police chief
Ensa Bajie in the presence of the then-crime management coordinator, Yankuba
Sonko, not to ‘jeopardize or tarnish the image of this country … and in the
event they call us, we should be mindful of what we say or do’,” it said.
A police officer from Barra, Babucarr Bah, reportedly said
Sonko told him: “Make sure you don’t say anything to the investigators”, and
that on Sonko’s instructions, “we took them to bars, gave them alcohol and
women.”
Bah also said around December 2005, Sonko told him to
falsify the July 22, 2005 diary entry from the Barra police station where the
migrants were initially arrested and that the diary entries were then
completely rewritten.
But Sonko was said to have denied the allegation.
The commission is expected to deliver its report in July.
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