A former death squad member of the infamous paramilitary “junglers”
of ex-Gambian dictator, Yahya Jammeh has described how
more than 50 Ghanaian and other West African migrants were murdered in July
2005.
In a radio interview given in 2013 to a Gambian radio station
and translated into English for the first time, Bai
Lowe revealed how his unit covered the migrants’ heads with cheap plastic bags,
shot them and dumped them in wells across Gambia’s border with Senegal.
One of the migrants escaped
and after he was recaptured, a jungler “cut
him into pieces like a Tabaski ram”
and put him in a plastic sack. (Tabaski is the Muslim “festival
of sacrifice” Eid al-Adha at which rams and
sheep are slaughtered.)
On May 16, 2018, Human
Rights Watch and TRIAL International released a report based on interviews with 30 former
Jammeh-era officials showing that the migrants were murdered by the junglers
after having been detained by Jammeh’s closest deputies in the army, navy, and
police forces.
In
response to the report, Martin Kyere, the sole known Ghanaian
survivor of the massacre, the families of those disappeared in Gambia, and
Ghanaian human rights organizations, called on the Ghanaian government to
investigate the new evidence and potentially seek Jammeh’s extradition and
prosecution in Ghana.
Ghana Minister
of Information, Dr Mustapha Abdul-Hamid, announced last week that
the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs and the Attorney-General’s Department were “studying”
the request “to ask for the extradition to, and trial of Yahaya Jammeh in
Ghana.”
William Nyarko,
Executive Director of the Africa
Centre for International Law and Accountability (ACILA), who is coordinating
the campaign in Ghana to have Jammeh prosecuted for the massacre, said that the
jungler’s testimony underscored the importance of Ghana taking up the case.
“Forty-four Ghanaians were cruelly murdered in a foreign country. The gruesome
killings as narrated Bai Lowe should shock the conscience of Ghana to get to
the bottom of what happened and ultimately bring the perpetrators to account.”
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| Bai Lowe, ex junglers member |
Baboucar “Bai” Lowe, a former
Gambian Army Warrant officer, who is now living in Germany, described the
events in his 2013 interview with journalist Pa Nderry M’Bai of Freedom Radio based
in North Carolina (USA):
“We got information
that they were captured mercenaries … who were coming to attack the Gambia. So,
we caught them, and we took them to the NIA [National Intelligence Authority]
office. From the NIA headquarters, they were scattered, and [then] we took them
to Kanilai [Yahya Jammeh’s home village]”
Following an order to
kill the migrants; “Two guys will just bring you to the well execute you and
throw you in the well [in Senegal]. That is where I saw them use a pistol to
kill people….. [T]hey hold you and shoot you, while they already had a plastic
bag over your head, the one dalasi [= 10 Ghanaian Pesewas] black plastic bags,
shoot you and throw you in the well.”
Regarding the escapee,
Bai Lowe stated; “Yes, one escaped, he was caught near Kankurang and Bambara.
When he was caught, [Sanna] Manjang [a Jungler] went there and cut him into
pieces like a Tabaski ram and put him into a sack. He even boasts about that,
that nobody has done what he did for the Gambia because he has cut more people
into pieces than any soldier in the Gambian Army. He said he has more guts than
the kids because the kids cannot do what he did. He has killed people, cut them
up, bagged them and threw them in [the bush]”
Bai Lowe, who was
trained in Libya, served in the Gambian Presidential Guard and the junglers for
some 12 years before being arrested himself in 2012 and jailed in Banjul’s
infamous Mile 2 prison. After his release, he participated in a December 2014 coup attempt.
Bai Lowe’s account
squares with that of the survivor Martin Kyere, who
jumped out of a pick-up truck and into the forest just before the other
detainees in the truck were apparently shot and killed.
Kyere has been advocating for the Ghana
government to prosecute the case. “We need to make clear that Ghanaians abroad
can’t be tortured and killed with impunity. By prosecuting this crime, the
government will be protecting and standing up for Ghanaians everywhere.”
In a 2009 Memorandum of Understanding between
Ghana and Gambia intended to put the issue to rest , the two countries “pledged
to pursue through all available means the arrests and prosecution of all those
involved in the deaths and disappearances of the Ghanaians and other ECOWAS
nationals, especially those identified as culprits in the report.” No arrests have ever been made in connection with the case.
However, the Ghanaian groups which have called for Jammeh’s prosecution
include the
Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Africa Centre for International Law and Accountability (ACILA), Perfector of Sentiments
Foundation (POS), Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), Human Rights
Advocacy Centre (HRAC), Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), and Amnesty
International.
Source: Jammeh2Justice https://www.facebook.com/Jammeh2Justice/posts/2071581913114388
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