OMM Redaksiyası
The former head of The Gambia’s paramilitary unit known as the “Junglers” has appeared before a military court to face charges of desertion, according to Agence France-Presse.
Sanna Manjang, a former lieutenant colonel, is accused of abandoning the country’s armed forces in 2017 after longtime President Yahya Jammeh was removed from power. The case is being heard in the capital, Banjul.
Prosecutors allege that Manjang was absent for “a continuous period of nine years with the intention of deserting”. He was arrested in Senegal in November last year and repatriated to The Gambia a month later.
Trial follows dropped murder charges
The military proceedings represent another attempt to hold Manjang accountable for alleged abuses committed during Jammeh’s rule. A separate murder case against him was dropped in July after prosecutors struggled to secure witnesses, some of whom were allegedly members of the Junglers.
Manjang had faced four murder charges, including the 2004 killing of AFP journalist Deyda Hydara. He was also accused of killing three other men, including one whom prosecutors alleged he personally decapitated.
After the murder charges were withdrawn, Manjang was charged separately with assaulting two other men. That case remains ongoing.
Junglers accused of killings and torture
The Junglers operated independently of The Gambia’s armed forces and have long been accused by the United Nations of extrajudicial killings and torture.
Jammeh lost power in 2016 to Adama Barrow, then an opposition leader who is now president, and later went into exile. The Gambia subsequently established the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission to investigate alleged crimes committed during his rule.
The commission concluded that between 240 and 250 people were killed by the state. It also documented evidence of widespread extrajudicial killings, torture, kidnappings, witch hunts and other abuses.
Several of Jammeh’s alleged accomplices, including former Junglers members, have been detained and sentenced in Germany, Switzerland and the United States.
