The Gambia to prosecute former president for crimes committed under rule

The Gambia’s government has said it will prosecute former president Yahya Jammeh for crimes committed under his nearly 23-year rule, including rape, murder and torture.

This came after a recommendation by a truth and reconciliation commission, which submitted its final report last November. The report included 265 recommendations — of which the government has accepted all but two.

The report also named 70 alleged perpetrators, all of whom the Gambian government now says they will prosecute. They include former vice-president Isatou Njie-Saidy, as well as members of the infamous “Junglers” death squad, who were accused of assassinating Jammeh’s opponents. One alleged former member of this group is currently on trial in Germany.

The Gambia’s Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission held public hearings, taking the testimony of more than 400 witnesses, in a process that lasted for nearly three years. It found that at least 240 people had died as a result of Jammeh’s rule, including students, soldiers, migrants from other West African countries, former finance minister Ousman Koro Ceesay and journalist and AFP correspondent Deyda Hydara, who was killed in a drive-by shooting in 2004.

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Jammeh, who is now 57, has been hiding in Equatorial Guinea, roughly 3,000km away, since he left power. The Gambia has no extradition treaty with Equatorial Guinea, meaning it is not clear whether Jammeh will ever face trial or spend time in prison.

Jammeh took control of the small west African country, which has a population of roughly 2.1 million people, in a coup in July 1994. He stayed as president until January 2017. During that time, Jammeh was known as a brutal eccentric who made citizens undergo what he said were his own cures for AIDS or HIV and infertility, which proved to be bogus. He also ordered witch hunts in various parts of the country, where locals — particularly the elderly — were rounded up and forced at gunpoint to drink a liquid that made them hallucinate. Some later died.

The Gambia is now led by Adama Barrow, who was elected for a second term last December. He is the country’s third president since it achieved independence from Britain in 1965.

“Nowadays nobody can hide from justice,” The Gambia’s justice minister Dawda Jallow told the BBC on Wednesday.

Mr Jallow said they don’t want to take a “piecemeal approach” to the prosecutions and he has suggested setting up a special chamber which will have a universal jurisdiction. “This is something that is to be determined as a result of other consultations.”

He said they will also figure out ways to prosecute other alleged perpetrators who are now abroad. “Wherever they are in the world, the long arm of justice will reach them.”