Former Gambian president Yahya Jammeh ordered the massacre of about 30 migrants he said were “mercenaries” sent to topple him in 2005, a member of the former strongman’s hit squad told a truth commission on Tuesday.
The testimony came a day after another army officer accused Jammeh of ordering the murder of a leading journalist who worked for an independent newspaper and wrote articles about the corruption that marked Jammeh’s iron-fisted rule for 22 years.
Omar Jallow, a former officer in the Presidential Guard, said about 45 Europe-bound migrants comprising nationals from Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Togo were arrested on a beach while trying to get to Europe.
“Yahya Jammeh ordered for the execution of the foreign nationals,” believing they were mercenaries sent to topple him, Jallow said.
They were taken to a firing range and then the soldiers were told by their commanding officer, Lieutenant Solo Bojang, that the captives were to be killed.
“Solo said these people were mercenaries and he told us that the order from the former head of state [Jammeh] was to fire at them,” he said, adding that the bodies were thrown in a well.
“I was given 100 dollars by one of them who pleaded to me to allow him say his last prayers, but before he completely knelt down [another soldier] fired at him. I used the 100 dollars,” Jallow said.
Human Rights Watch said that the other migrants were also killed.
Jammeh seized power in a bloodless coup in 1994 in the former British colony.
His refusal to leave power after losing a presidential election in 2016 sparked a regional crisis in West Africa, which ended when Jammeh agreed to live in exile in Equatorial Guinea.
China has possibly committed “genocide” in its treatment of Uighurs and other minority Muslims in its western region of Xinjiang, the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China said in a report on Thursday. The bipartisan commission said that new evidence had last year emerged that “crimes against humanity — and possibly genocide — are occurring” in Xinjiang. It also accused China of harassing Uighurs in the US. China has been widely condemned for setting up complexes in Xinjiang that it describes as “vocational training centers” to stamp out extremism and give people new skills, which others have called concentration camps. The UN says that
A racing pigeon has survived an extraordinary 13,000km Pacific Ocean crossing from the US to find a new home in Australia. Now authorities consider the bird a quarantine risk and plan to kill it. Kevin Celli-Bird yesterday said he discovered that the exhausted bird that arrived in his Melbourne backyard on Dec. 26 last year had disappeared from a race in the US state of Oregon on Oct. 29. Experts suspect the pigeon that Celli-Bird has named Joe — after US president-elect Joe Biden — hitched a ride on a cargo ship to cross the Pacific. Joe’s feat has attracted the attention
The Polish Supreme Court on Friday quashed a lower court’s green light for the extradition of a businessman to China for alleged fraud, a charge he has denied, saying that he is being targeted for supporting Falun Gong. Polish authorities took Chinese-born Swedish citizen Li Zhihui, now 53, into custody in 2019 on an international warrant issued by China for alleged non-payment in a business deal, Krzysztof Kitajgrodzki, his Polish lawyer, told reporters. Following the Supreme Court ruling, the case would return to a lower appellate court for review. Kitajgrodzki told reporters that it was still not a given that his client
DELIVERING HOPE: The Japanese PM pledged to push ahead with plans to stage the Games, despite polls showing about 80% think they will not or should not happen Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga yesterday vowed to get the COVID-19 pandemic under control and hold the already postponed Olympic Games this summer with ample protection. In a speech opening a new session of parliament, Suga said that his government would revise laws to make disease prevention measures enforceable with penalties and compensation. Early in the pandemic, Japan was able to keep its caseload manageable with nonbinding requests for businesses to close or operate with social distancing, and for people to stay at home, but recent weeks have seen several highs in new cases per day, in part blamed on eased attitudes
RSS