body-container-line-1
30.01.2015 Gambia

Outrage in Gambia over government officials arrested

By AFP
A government source tells AFP a group of officials have been arrested on the orders of President Yahya Jammeh, pictured, for a wide range of issues.  By Don Emmert AFPA government source tells AFP a group of officials have been arrested on the orders of President Yahya Jammeh, pictured, for "a wide range of issues". By Don Emmert (AFP)
30.01.2015 LISTEN

Banjul (Gambia) (AFP) - Rights campaigners voiced outrage over unlawful detentions and other abuses in Gambia Friday as it emerged a group of senior government officials had been held without charge for more than a week.

Nine fisheries officials including the department head have been in custody since Tuesday last week, police have confirmed, accusing them of irregularities following an audit of the ministry.

Assistant superintendent David Kujabie told AFP the arrests were in connection with a report on the ministry's activities over six years from January 2008, but refused to say whether they had been charged.

A government source told AFP the officials were arrested on the orders of President Yahya Jammeh for "a wide range of issues including the issuance of fishing licenses to foreign companies and trawlers".

The source told AFP on condition of anonymity that fisheries minister Mass Axi Gai had been sacked and that work there had ground to a halt since the arrests, although AFP was not able to independently confirm this.

"We are junior officers who cannot take certain decisions. Our day-to-day function is seriously affected," he said.

Opposition leader Ousainou Darboe denounced the arrests, which saw present and former permanent secretaries and department directors taken into custody, as "unlawful and unconstitutional".

"The constitution of The Gambia is very categoric. It states if a person is arrested, he or she must be brought before a court of law within 72 hours of arrest.

"So detaining these fisheries officers beyond the 72 hours permitted by the constitution is a gross violation of the constitution."

The west African nation, the smallest on the mainland and surrounded on three sides by Senegal, has long been dogged by rights concerns under Jammeh's administration.

The regime of the man who says he can cure AIDS is often pilloried for human rights abuses, enforced disappearances, extra-judicial killings, torture and the muzzling of journalists.

Jammeh has woven an aura of mysticism around himself, dressing in billowing white robes, never letting go of his Koran and brooking no dissent while heaping derision on criticism from the West.

A coalition of ten rights organisations in Senegal, including Amnesty International, called Friday on the international community to investigate Gambian abuses including the detention without charge for more than four weeks of relatives of a failed coup attempt.

body-container-line