US hails Gambian prisoner release, voices fears over journalist

Banjul (Gambia) (AFP) - The United States said Tuesday it welcomed the Gambia's decision to release relatives of the ringleaders of a failed coup, but voiced concern over a journalist allegedly abducted by the secret police.

The west African nation said last week it had freed 12 of the mutineers' relatives who had been arrested in the days following the December attack on the presidential palace.

But it made no mention of Alagie Ceesay, the manager of the Banjul-based Teranga FM radio station, who is thought to have been in the custody of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) since July 17.

The US State Department said in a statement released through its embassy in Banjul it welcomed the decision "to release, after a lengthy period of detention without charge, family members of the December 30, 2014 coup plotters."

But it called on President Yahya Jammeh to release all prisoners held unlawfully without charge, adding that the United States was "deeply concerned" about Ceesay's whereabouts.

No member of the Gambian government or security forces has commented on Ceesay's disappearance or the reasons for his alleged abduction but there is no suggestion that it is connected to the coup plot.

A member of Ceesay's family, fearing reprisals and speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP the journalist had been missing since he was picked up on July 17 by unidentified men in a car.

He had only been released days earlier following an 11-day abduction which family members and rights groups blamed on the NIA, accusing the intelligence agency of torturing the journalist.

State Department spokesman John Kirby urged Jammeh's government to return Ceesay to his family and investigate both disappearances.

"We are worried because Alagie was weak and traumatised when he was released on July 13 by the NIA," a source at Teranga FM told AFP.

"He was suffering from continuous diarrhoea and had to see a doctor for a checkup. Even though he had plasters pasted on his forehead and neck, he would not explain what happened to him."

Ceesay's first brush with the security services came when he arrested and questioned by police when the Gambian authorities shut Teranga FM for several days in January.

Jammeh has ruled the thin sliver of a country that straddles the River Gambia with an iron fist since seizing power in 1994 and is regularly accused of rights abuses and repression of the media.