Pensioner Sarjo Manneh celebrated more joyfully than most when former leader Yahya Jammeh agreed to leave The Gambia in January.
After a decade, he believed he might see his son again. But nearly a month later, he is still waiting.
His
son Chief Ebrima Manneh, a journalist for a pro-government newspaper,
went missing in 2006 during a summit held in the tiny west African
country.
Agents of the feared National Intelligence Agency (NIA),
which reported directly to Jammeh, appeared at the offices of the Daily
Observer and took him away.
His colleagues and family have never seen him again.
In
2009 The Gambia’s then attorney-general Marie Saine-Firdaus told
parliament that Manneh was not in state custody, while others including
the current chief of police claimed he was living in the United States.
Jammeh’s
stunning electoral defeat in December — after 22 years in power —
triggered the release of many political prisoners — but not the
journalist.
“My hope is shattered,” his father told AFP.
– ‘Criminal action in court’ –
Despite
the crushing sorrow he feels, Manneh is shaking off the fear that kept
him from fighting a symbiotic system of secret police and trained
killers that took an unknown number of lives.
“I want to institute
criminal action in court against Yahya Jammeh and those responsible for
the disappearance of my son,” Manneh said.
Gambian diaspora media
regularly published lists of the unsolved crimes concerning the
missing, appealing for details and circulating years’ worth of rumours
about the most high-profile cases.
And there are nascent signs the
new government of President Adama Barrow is determined to bring closure
for families like the Mannehs, even while mired in a financial crisis
and faced with reforming a state that Jammeh’s critics say catered to
the interests of one man.
Interior Minister Mai Fatty, one of the
most vocal Jammeh opponents within the new administration, has said a
body will be set up to look into forced disappearances and to
investigate “black sites” that may still be holding victims.
“The responsibility lies on us to give an explanation to our people,” he told AFP.
Pro-regime figures may still be holding Gambians incommunicado.
“Some
people may still be held and are not known because the previous
government has so many detention centres that were not disclosed to the
public,” Fatty said.
– Jammeh’s ‘death squad’ –
Barrow
has promised to reform the NIA, changing its name, replacing its chief
and promising training for staff whose work would be limited to
“intelligence gathering, analysis and advice to the relevant arms of
government”.
“An appropriate commission will be established to conduct inquiries into disappearances,” he said.
Almost
every sector of society was targeted by the NIA and the “Junglers”, a
group of around 40 men described as Jammeh’s death squad.
Tumani
Jallow, a 24-year-old soldier with the elite State Guards battalion that
personally protected Jammeh, had an elevated status in Gambian society,
but when the NIA came this suddenly meant nothing.
After he was
arrested in September 2016, taken to NIA headquarters in Banjul, and
then whisked to an unknown location, Jallow’s family are painfully aware
he may never return.
“He and two of his colleagues in the Gambia
Armed Forces were arrested by state security agents shortly after the
arson attack on the ruling party’s headquarters,” said his brother Buba
Sawo.
“We have searched for him everywhere, but the NIA said he is
not in their custody,” Sawo told AFP. “We are pleading with the current
administration.”
Fredy Peccerelli, a world-renowned forensic
anthropologist who has helped nations as varied as Guatemala and Sri
Lanka identify scores of victims, told AFP the process would probably
take several years.
Work on genealogy, forensics, testimony and
any documentation from the prison system would be required, along with
the funds — potentially from international donors — to pay for it.
– ‘Large scale torture’ –
The
Gambia would have to decide whether to have open hearings, amnesties
for those who provided information, or other incentives for
whistleblowing like lesser sentences, Peccerelli said, referring to the
truth commission Barrow has promised.
Such testimony could also be
key in any future prosecutions. Since Jammeh left for exile last month,
arrests of high and low profile regime targets have begun.
Suwandi
Camara, a former fighter for Liberian warlord Charles Taylor, and
accomplice Bubacarr Jarju have been charged with abducting a Gambian
lawmaker and a businessman in Senegal with intent to murder them.
General
Bora Colley, former head of the country’s notorious prison system, was
arrested in Senegal last month, though later released without charge.
The biggest fish so far, former interior minister Ousman Sonko, was arrested in Switzerland in late January.
Under
investigation for crimes against humanity, Sonko could face prosecution
in Switzerland where authorities are under pressure from rights group
TRIAL to prove he authorised what they called “large-scale torture that
political opponents, journalists and human rights defenders suffered”.
For
Adama Kujabie, a relative of Jammeh’s whose father nonetheless fell
into the hands of the NIA in 2006, a day in court cannot come soon
enough.
“Those responsible for this heinous crime should face
justice,” he told AFP, urging an investigation to answer his single,
desperate question: “Is he alive or not?”
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