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By CARLEY PETESCH, Associated Press
DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Investigators with Gambia’s Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission delivered a final report to the president Thursday, identifying and recommending prosecution for those most responsible for crimes and human rights abuses committed during the 22-year rule of former President Yahya Jammeh.
Upon receiving the report, President Adama Barrow said he hoped the commission will be one of his legacies as a leader of Gambia.
After Barrow’s election in 2016, he vowed to right the wrongs of the past, especially widespread abuses under previous leader Jammeh. The commission was mandated to establish an impartial historical record of abuses committed from July 1994 to January 2017, when Jammeh fled into exile after losing elections. More than two years of hearings that led to this report documented human rights abuses and horrors that occurred under Jammeh’s rule.
Its submission comes just before Gambia’s 2 million people are set to vote in presidential elections on Dec. 4, in which Barrow is running for re-election against five other candidates.
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After submitting the report, Commission Chair Lamin J. Sise said that “the individuals involved in perpetrating the violations and abuses must be held accountable for their crimes” and their names are “mentioned expressly in the relevant sections of the report.”
The commission found that the abuses resulted in the deaths of “240 to 250 Gambians and non-Gambians in the hands of state or its agents.”
Sise did not mention the names of those the commission has recommended for prosecution, however, there is little doubt that Jammeh is among those named, according to experts.
“The evidence is in … We have the truth,” Baba Hydara, whose father Deyda Hydara was a newspaper editor killed in 2004, said.
“Now we need justice,” he said. “Justice for my father, justice for all of Jammeh’s victims, and justice for Gambian society as a whole.”
Jammeh is likely at the top of the list of former officials whose prosecution is recommended, Reed Brody of the International Commission of Jurists, who works with Jammeh’s victims, said.
“Witnesses with first-hand knowledge implicated Jammeh in murder, torture, rape and the other terrible crimes cited by the commission,” said Brody.
“This report begins the countdown to the day Yahya Jammeh will have to face his victims. Whether it’s in The Gambia or before an international court, it will be very difficult now for him to escape justice,” he said.
The commission’s report will not be made immediately public.
Barrow, who received the report in Gambia’s capital, Banjul, now has six months to release a paper on how to implement the recommendations submitted by the commission. He promised Thursday that “justice will be done.”
Jammeh, who seized power in 1994 in a bloodless coup, was voted out of office in 2016 after opposition parties created a coalition with Barrow as the main candidate.
After initially agreeing to step down, Jammeh resisted and a six-week crisis saw neighboring West African countries prepare to send in troops to stage a military intervention. Jammeh was forced into exile and fled to Equitorial Guinea aboard a plane with his family and many belongings.
The 56-year-old Jammeh still has considerable support in the tiny West African nation, despite the abuses that took place under his rule.
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