Gambia:Yahya Jammeh did not execute 9 but 18 people Says former Gambian Ambassador Essa Bokarr Sey

In a radio interview with U.S based Hello Gambia Radio, former Gambian ambassador to Washington, Essa Bokarr Sey  made some startling revelations about the Gambia's execution of death row prisoners. According to Mr. Sey, Yahya Jammeh executed 18 people and not the 9 we were made to believe. Mr. Sey also revealed that the President of the Republic of The Gambia has threatened to assassinate Alioune Tine, President of  RADDHO, a human rights organisation based in Dakar.

Gambia:Today our nation is shocked, saddened and outraged

By Assan Martin, Human Rights Lawyer

Mr. President:

Since honest and sincere advice are lacking in your administration, I felt that I should give short advice to you with all sincerity and honesty on the recent executions of death row inmates.

Today our nation is shocked, saddened and outraged as to the recent executions of some 9 inmates in mile 2 Prison. As a staunched believer of rights and liberties especially the rights of accused persons, I have constantly spoken against the death penalty since October 19^th 2010. Reference of which is on the point newspaper edition October 19^th, 2010. I was basically advocating for the commutation of death sentences to life imprisonment to avoid the innocent lost of lives that can never be recovered.

As counsel who represented and supervised several murder cases since the inception of the special court established to extradite cases and on gratis for my state brief cases. I here remind you Mr. President that our judicial system (courts) is full of flaws and mainly not competent as claimed. Especially some foreign judges trying to impressed you at the expense of the Gambian people. Be informed that there is a lot of miscarriages of justices in our criminal justice system especially with procedures and proceedings in cases of felons in our courts.

Mr. President the ill advices you received from the so called professionals you relied upon are damaging to our nation.”Tackling crimes can only come by tackling the root causesof crimes”   and for people to be educated for a decent society. Death penalty sentences are not a solution to tackling crimes.

However, your former Justice Minister Mr. Edu GomeZ and co tried to defend capital punishment with no justifiable reasons but to solidify their positions in government.

Sadly most of our foreign JUDGES are incompetent and don’t understand the Gambian society and culture. One cannot imagine a judge sentenced to death an accused person in provocative murder cases. Also in a sad case of woman “sentence to death by hanging “for dumping a baby caused by post-antenatal syndromes or stresses leading to concealment of birth in a remote village.

More so the treason trial involving General Lang Tombong Tamba and 8 others on 10^thMay 2010, is a clear case of travesty of justice. I believe in don’t defending the guilt but again let me remind you sir that there existed no justifiable evidence for conviction in this case.  Where conviction is warranted legal experts will not comment against it.

Once more Mr. President halts all executions and repeals all death penalty provisions. As from today our nation will never be the same because the current situation is beyond remedy.  These executions have tarnished the image of our democracy, our Justice system and respect for human rights.

The Gambia: The Balangbaa Uprising

(By Mathew K Jallow)

Their persistent denials rang hollow. Yahya Jammeh’s spokes-people Njogu Bah and Mahamadou Tangara towed the line prescribed by Yahya Jammeh, and in the process managed to create only doubt, yet their guilt-ridden diplomatic offensive did nothing to dissuade Gambians familiar with the regime’s pattern of lies, deceit and denials. The ugly and unimaginable slaughter of innocent and defenseless Gambians was already spreading around the world like wildfire, and Gambians both at home and abroad were left utterly dumbfounded by these egregious acts of violence. What happened on the night of Thursday August 23, 2012, is beyond description and spells the beginning of the end for Yahya Jammeh and his Neanderthal regime.  Like the students’ massacre on April 10, 2000, the mindless slaughter of nine Mile 2 Prison inmates on August 23, 2012, will forever remain etched in the collective memory of the Gambian nation. At exactly 9.30 pm on August 23, 2012, the frightening sound of heavy metal doors broke the stillness of the night. One by one, nine selected inmates were led from their dark, dingy concrete-walled cells and out under the dark open sky above Mile 2 Central Prisons. It was the last time anyone of them would see the mosquito infested cells or smell the overpowering stench of rot, death and human feaces of the dungeon each had called home for so many years. It was the last time they would lay eyes on the four fellow citizens who loitered around aimlessly and who out of despair and despondence had developed severe psychological problems and become mad inside the hellhole of Mile Two Prisons.

Today, it is almost one week since nine Mile 2 Central Prison death-row inmates faced the firing squad that cut their lives short with a hail of bullets. The nine were among forty seven Gambians and non-Gambians sitting on death row who were removed to a central holding cell after Yahya Jammeh threatened to execute them. And as they were being led away to their deaths, one of them, Lamin Darboe shouted out for all the prisoners to know they were being taken away and perhaps never to come back. And he was so right. Since Yahya Jammeh made good his threats and ordered the execution of nine inmates, international pressure and outright condemnation has severely undermined his efforts to rationalize his crime against humanity as an application of the letter of the law. The extremely un-Gambian enforcement of the death penalty and the use of the firing squad as an instrument of death for convicted prisoners and terror against the living dead, by a corrupt judicial system that had long ago lost its credibility, have put the Yahya Jammeh regime on notice. Understandably, the mass murders committed on the orders of Yahya Jammeh last Thursday August 23, overshadowed the brutal execution in Foni, of two sibling elders from the village of Kanunorr, Wuyeh Colly and Enor Colly. Their executions were carried out with a mind-bugling casualness and nonchalance that defy imagination. And today, nearly one week after the executions of nine prisoners that traumatized a nation, another inmate, Musa Badjie, collapsed and died inside Mile 2 Prisons, a testament to the brutal and harsh prison conditions.

For seventeen long years, Yahya Jammeh has tested the will of Gambians with periodic adventures into the Machiavellian world of Stalinist brutality. Since 1994, more than two hundred Gambians and non-Gambians have been murdered on orders of Yahya Jammeh, as many as thirty Gambian men and women have disappeared from the face of the earth after their arrest by regime agents, some as long as twelve years. But the executions of nine innocent prisoners last week brings to mind the brutal execution of forty-four Ghanaians nearly ten years ago, in addition to the vehicular murders of twenty children, run down by Yahya Jammeh’s speeding motorcades. And besides the witch-hunting that killed ten elderly men and women, an average of ten murders are committed each year on the orders of Yahya Jammeh. But there is still a lot we don’t know about the brutality inflicted on Gambians by Yahya Jammeh and his agents of death. Last week alone, two innocent Jola elders from the village of Kanunorr in the Fonis were abducted and murdered on Yahya Jammeh’s orders. Since then, it has come to light that Foni Jolas are under siege with frequent abduction and disappearances and of the known twenty Gambian forced disappearances over the past decade, most are Foni Jolas and include several murders in Kanilai village. Fellow Gambians, of recent, we have all been united by a deadly hatred of Yahya Jammeh, and the time to make him taste his own medicine has come. The time has come for the Gambian Diaspora, civil society organizations, the political establishment, and Gambian’s military and security services, to come together and reclaim our country. As we strategize on how to rid The Gambia of Yahya Jammeh in the coming weeks and months, we implore the military to help us make Yahya Jammeh history. The Balangbaa Uprising is coming, and must happen to free our people from bondage. The time is NOW.

Gambia says nine prisoners executed by firing squad

(AFP) BANJUL, Gambia — Gambia's interior ministry said Monday nine death row prisoners had been executed by firing squad, after President Yahya Jammeh vowed to carry out all death sentences by mid-September.

In a statement the ministry named nine people, including one woman, who were "executed by firing squad on Sunday 26th August 2012" after they were sentenced to death and all their appeals had been exhausted.

"The general public is hereby warned that the rule of law as regards the peace and stability and the protection of lives, property and liberty will not be compromised for whatever reason," read the statement.

Amnesty International reported the execution of the nine prisoners on Saturday, a day before the government said it took place and just days after an African Union envoy urged Jammeh to renounce his plans to execute all 47 death row prisoners.

In a televised address to mark this year's Muslim feast of Eid al-Fitr on Sunday Jammeh said: "By the middle of next month, all the death sentences will have been carried out to the letter.

"There is no way my government will allow 99 percent of the population to be held to ransom by criminals."

One of the men executed, Dawda Bojang, had been convicted for murdering British tourist Ronald Stanley Ford in 2002.

Two of the prisoners were Senegalese, one of them a woman, Tabara Samba, convicted in 2007 of murdering her husband by pouring hot cooking oil over him after he took a second wife.

Three of the dead were soldiers who were convicted in 1998 of treason and murdering two fellow soldiers.

While the last official execution took place in 1985, AFP's correspondent in Banjul said that executions in Gambia, a sliver of land wedged into Senegal, have continued unofficially with the most recent taking place in 2007.

Jammeh, a former military officer who seized power in a 1994 coup, brooks no dissent in a country often blasted by rights bodies for abuses.

Many top officials have found themselves charged with treason, often related to coup plots which observers have said are a sign of paranoia by Jammeh, who won a fourth term in office in November 2011.

Last year eight military top brass, including the former army and intelligence chiefs and the ex-deputy head of the police force, were sentenced to death for treason.

The European Union on Monday condemned the executions and demanded they stop.

"I demand the immediate halt of executions," EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said in a statement.

"I recall the (Gambian government's) international commitments, as well as the commitments concerning the respect of human rights contained in the Cotonou Agreement, which governs relations between the European Union and The Gambia."

She added: "In light of these executions, the European Union will urgently consider an appropriate response."

Gambia: It makes no sense, Jammeh at it again

By Abdoulaye Saine
Against a backdrop of mounting international ostracism and suspension of much needed financial assistance from the EU - the consequence of a poor human rights record, Jammeh’s threat to execute forty-seven inmates by September was designed to attract attention from Western media and human rights organizations. He has consistently courted media attention with outrageous comments and acts when things are not going well at home. This, to deflect attention from failed policies, which are too many to recount here. Did he not claim to have “discovered” the cure for HIV/AIDS, hypertension, infertility and diabetes, to name a few? Did Jammeh not orchestrate a so-called “witch-hunt” to supposedly purge the country of witches?

Yahya Jammeh’s threat to carry out death sentences of “death-row” inmates is simply outrageous! It makes no sense at all! But Jammeh’s rule and decisions have hardly made sense to most right-thinking individuals. Did he not defy religious and cultural sensibilities when he announced his threat to a group of religious elders on Islam’s most sacred Holiday- Eid-ul-Fitr? Who in their right mind would issue such a threat on a day of forgiveness and goodwill other than to attract attention?  This time, it is not a threat against gays but “criminals.” Perhaps, a more interesting question is, why the threat(s)?

Jammeh’s most recent threat may well be another attempt to cover his failings- both personal and national. This odious threat to hang “death-row” inmates is/ was intended to douse dissent in a population already fatigued by mounting economic hardship and subdued by extra-judicial killings. Whether Jammeh carries/ carried out his threat or not (I pray he did not) is now immaterial, as he has already achieved his intended goals- deflecting attention from a country and people gripped by famine and soaring food prices, and perhaps more importantly, attracting media coverage, including worldwide attention and condemnation. Each time Jammeh makes a threat, or announces a  medical “discovery,” Western media houses and rights organizations fall for it, which they should, as he has killed enough already. Yet in the same vein he manipulates them for self-serving purposes.

Jammeh’s so-called medical “discoveries,” “witch-hunts” and threat to execute forty-seven inmates are/ were simply outrageous and sure to get his name in the news. Yet Jammeh thrives on the outrageous, as he has accomplished little of distinction in his personal life, or eighteen-year rule. Did he not want to be crowned king or emperor of Gambia?  Does he not insist on being called professor, Dr., Sheikh- all unearned titles and awards?

While I am not a psychiatrist, I suspect Jammeh suffers from a mental disorder called “Histrionic personality disorder” (HPD), which according to the American Psychiatric Association “is defined as a personality disorder characterized by a pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking, including an excessive need for approval and inappropriately seductive behavior, usually beginning in early adulthood. These individuals are lively, dramatic, vivacious, enthusiastic, and flirtatious http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histrionic_personality_disorder ,August, 24, 2012).

Jammeh must come to his senses and stop toying with the lives of so-called death-row inmates like Dr. Amadou Janneh, whose only “crime” is saying “No” to his madness- a disorder that must be taken seriously.

 Gambians the world-over join the AU, EU, the US and all right-thinking individuals and condemn Yahya Jammeh’s threat to execute of so-called “death-row” inmates. It would be wrong, unjust and cruel.

Abdoulaye Saine

Oxford, OH

Gambia:EU demands 'immediate halt' to executions in Gambia

The European Union called Sunday for an "immediate halt" to executions in Gambia after reports that President Yahya Jammeh had begun carrying out a threat to clear death row by mid-September.

"I strongly condemn the executions which have reportedly taken place ... and I demand the immediate halt of executions," EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said in a statement.

Rights watchdog Amnesty International said Friday it had "received credible reports that nine persons were executed last night in Gambia and that more persons are under threat of imminent executions today and in the coming days."

Jammeh said in an address to mark this year's Muslim feast of Eid al-Fitr last Sunday: "By the middle of next month, all the death sentences would have been carried out to the letter.

"There is no way my government will allow 99 percent of the population to be held to ransom by criminals," he said.

According to Amnesty those executed included a woman and two Senegalese citizens.

Death sentences in impoverished Gambia, a tiny west African state wedged into Senegal, are carried out by hanging.

Jammeh, a former military officer who seized power in a 1994 coup, brooks no dissent in a country often blasted by rights bodies for abuses.

Amnesty said the last official execution took place in 1985. However AFP's correspondent in Banjul reports that executions have continued unofficially with the most recent taking place in 2007.

According to a tally by AFP, 47 people have been sentenced to death since July 2010. Last year eight military top brass, including the former army and intelligence chiefs and the ex-deputy head of the police force, were sentenced to death for treason.

Many top officials have found themselves charged with treason, often related to coup plots which observers have said are a sign of paranoia by Jammeh, who won a fourth term in office in November 2011.

In her statement, Ashton said: "I recall the (Gambian government's) international commitments, as well as the commitments concerning the respect of human rights contained in the Cotonou Agreement, which governs relations between the European Union and The Gambia."

She added: "In light of these executions, the European Union will urgently consider an appropriate response."

© ANP/AFP

Gambia: President Jammeh must retract call for execution of death row inmates | Amnesty International

(Amnesty International) --- Gambian president Yahya Jammeh’s reported comments that people sentenced to death in The Gambia will be executed by September must not be acted on, and must be retracted, Amnesty International said today.

President Jammeh made the comments in a televised address broadcast on Sunday evening and again on Monday to mark the Muslim feast of Eid-al-Fitrt.

If executions are carried out in Gambia, it will mark an end of a 27-year period without executions. The last execution in The Gambia took place in 1985. 

Amnesty International presently classifies The Gambia as abolitionist in practice, and therefore as one of the 141 countries [more than two thirds of states] worldwide which have abolished the death penalty either in law or practice.
 
"President Jammeh’s comments are deeply troubling and will undoubtedly cause severe anguish to those on death row and their families,” said Audrey Gaughran, Amnesty International’s Africa director. “Any attempt to carry out this threat would be both deeply shocking and a major set-back for human rights in Gambia.”

“The President’s statement is in stark contracts to the trend, both in West Africa and globally, towards ending the use of the death penalty.”

This is not the first time President Jammeh has made such threats. In September 2009, he announced that executions would resume to counter rising crime. In October of that year, the Director of Public Prosecutions was reported as saying that all prisoners sentenced to death would be executed by hanging as soon as possible.

While no executions were carried out following these statements, the current threat remains a matter for serious concern.

According to the Gambian government, there were 42 men and two women on death row as of 31 December 2011, 13 of whom had been sentenced during that year. In The Gambia, capital punishment can be imposed for murder and treason.

"Unfair trials are commonplace in the country, where death sentences are known to be used as a tool against the political opposition and international standards on fair trials are not respected”, said Audrey Gaughran. 

“The number of grossly unfair trails is shocking and an especially serious concern in cases where the death penalty is handed down.”

Background

No West African country has executed prisoners in recent years and the death penalty for all crimes has been abolished in Togo in West Africa, as well as in Burundi, Gabon and Rwanda in the last five years.

In July, Benin became the 75th state worldwide to join the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1989, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty. 

Gambia is a party to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. In 2008, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the body monitoring this regional treaty, adopted a resolution calling on States Party to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights to observe a moratorium on the execution of death sentences with a view to abolishing capital punishment.

During a session of the Commission in Banjul, Gambia, in May 2011, the Chairperson of the African Commission’s Working Group on the Death Penalty in Africa, stated that “capital punishment… represents a most grave violation of… the right to life under Article 4 of the African Charter”. 

Under international standards, the death penalty can only be imposed for crimes where there is an intention to kill which results in the loss of life. According to the United Nations, this excludes the possibility of imposing death sentences for activities of a political nature, including treason, espionage and other vaguely defined acts described as 'crimes against the State'.

For Africa: 38 of the 54 member states of the African Union are abolitionist in law (16) or practice (22), also more than 2 thirds.

Amnesty report

An Amnesty International Death Penalty report in 2011 stated:

Thirteen new death sentences were handed down for murder and treason in Gambia in 2011 after often grossly unfair trials, although no executions were carried out.

Seven out of eight people on whom such sentences were imposed in 2010 for plotting to overthrow the government were confirmed by the Court of Appeal in April.

Gambia abolished the death penalty for drug-related offences, which had been extended only in 2010, and replaced it with life imprisonment on 4 April.

Amendments were also made to the Criminal Code Act and the Trafficking in Persons Act 2007, to make them compatible with the 1997 Constitution which contains Article 17(2), prohibiting the death penalty for offences not involving violence, or the administration of a toxic substance, resulting in the death of another person.