In Ghanaian Murders, Gambia’s Despot, Yahya Jammeh Taken to Int'l. Court of Justice

An International Human Rights Activist, Anthony Rau has filed a suit at the International Court of Justice against former President John Agyekum Kufuor, NPP flag-bearer Nana Akuffo-Addo and Gambian President Yahya Jammeh.

Mr. Rau said former President Kufuor and Nana Akuffo-Addo were complicit in the murder of over 33 Ghanaians in Gambia in 2005.

In view of this new development, I dug into the archives and came up with this four years old Open Letter to President John Atta Mills.

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President John Atta Mills
Accra, Ghana
July 13th. 2009

Dear Mr. President,

Sir, congratulations to you and the Ghanaian people for being the sub-Saharan African country chosen to host newly elected American President, Barack H. Obama. Political events in Ghana over the past several years have demonstrated that your country truly deserved this high honor and your countrymen should be proud of how far Ghana has come in the institutionalization of civil societies, free and fair electoral process, respect of the two-term limit as enshrined in your constitution. The peaceful transition of power over the past several election cycles was nothing short of truly remarkable. To the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, West Africa in particular, Ghana has been a leader, a beckon of hope that Anglophone African countries have admired. Today, many proud Ghanaians are returning home from overseas to take advantage of new economic opportunities being created and they are the vanguards in your country's social, economic and cultural transformation. Gambians truly envy the spirit of your peoples' commitment to live up to the true ideals of democratic and accountable governance. The true application of the rule of law, fair dispensation of justice, and opportunities accessible to all without regard to religious, tribal or other discriminating social barriers is becoming pervasive in every sector of Ghanaian society. That is the way it should be. If you keep up the spirit and transform this new tradition into an entrenched political culture, your country will become the Botswana of West Africa.

The primary reason for writing, however, is the recently concluded report pertaining to the unconscionable massacre, in the Gambia, by Yahya Jammeh's Gambian military and security forces, of nearly forth-four Ghanaian and other ECOWAS nationals from Togo, Guinea-Conakry and Senegal. Yahya Jammeh's recent offer to compensate the families of the Ghanaians whose slaughter he had ordered back in 2005 is the closest he has come yet to admitting his guilt in this horrific incident. Yahya Jammeh's deceitful attempt to extricate himself from blame in your countrymen's slaughter has been challenged by Gambia's media, a media that knows how he operates. To begin with, it was the Gambian media which broke the news of the horrendous massacre not long after it happened, but to our dismay, the Ghanaian authorities at that time seemed to ignore the story, probably because to the government of John Kafour, it may have sounded too bizarre to be credible. But fast forward to now, Gambians for the most part refute the findings of the recently concluded investigative panel and the report submitted to your government as totally fictitious and not worth the paper it is written on. For starters, everyone in the Gambia knows for a fact it was Yahya Jammeh who ordered the slaughter of defenseless immigrants from your country, Togo, Guinea and our neighbor Senegal, and there are credible eyewitnesses who will reveal the full account of what really happened. Sir, the “rationalization” that these victims were mistaken for rebels is a smoke-screen as dubious as it is a fantastical nonsense.

Sir, how can a group of unarmed young men carry out a military overthrow of a country where they have no accomplice and where they know no one, are unarmed, hungry and disheveled? During the interrogations, the group had in fact explained in no uncertain terms that they were immigrant transients on their way to the Canary Island off the coast of Morocco, but the Yahya Jammeh regime instead of investigating further, decided to take their lives instead. Gambians are making it abundantly clear that Yahya Jammeh, as head of the military junta in our country, personally ordered the senseless slaughter that occurred on the beaches of Brufut and Tanje. Now that Yahya Jammeh has finally realized the futility of denying the self-evident truth, his offer to compensate the families of his victims is in the opinion of most Gambians, both an admission and a confession of complicity in the commitment of such a heinous crime. Judging from the way that Yahya Jammeh has dispatched more than eighty innocent Gambians to their untimely death over the past years, we can say with absolute certainty that he was the architect of this slaughter of the fifty innocent immigrants, most of who happened to be Ghanaians. And since Yahya Jammeh has admitted that his security forces are to blame for this heinous crime, the wheel of justice must begin to work. As Commander-in-Chief of the Gambian Armed Forces, Yahya Jammeh is uniquely positioned to get to the bottom of this crime and bring the guilty to justice, including himself as the person who gave orders for the slaughter of innocent people.

Sir, Gambians are confident that at the end of a thorough investigation, one primary actor in this sad tale who will be found complicit in the cruel ordeal would be Yahya Jammeh himself. Sir, this genocidal crime cannot just be swept under the rug because Yahya Jammeh has agreed to compensate families of eight victims and not the entire forty-four, nor will we allow political expediency to override the rule of law. We urge your government to take this matter up to its logical conclusion in the interest of justice for the victims, their families and our two peoples. The government of Ghana needs, therefore, to rethink the agreement you signed with Yahya Jammeh in Tripoli recently, an agreement brokered by Col. Mumar Gadhafi, because a crime was committed and this matter is no longer an issue of diplomacy, but of law. This matter must not be laid to rest until a full accounting of what happened is brought to light, because the report on which the recent Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) you signed with Yahya Jammeh in Tripoli, was based was a total work of fiction and, therefore, lacks credibility. Moreover, despite the fact the victims were foreign nationals, the crimes were committed on Gambian territory, and the Gambians can bring prosecutable charges against Yahya Jammeh and his willing cabal of executioners. Sir, notwithstanding your desire to normalize relations with Yahya Jammeh's regime, your government must not be driven by political expediency to take the easy way out. The only way the dead can be honored is through thoroughly investigating the circumstances surrounding their executions. Sir, according to the report, Yahya Jammeh has blamed members of his military and security forces for the executions, but Gambians have become accustomed to Yahya Jammeh never taking responsibility for his action, but always shifting blame, but this time, we refuse to allow his lies and deception to take on the ring of truth.

In another new development, Yahya Jammeh recently sent some representatives to Nigeria to propagate his lies and give false information regarding the massacre incident with the intent to conceal the truth because the regime is aware that the testimony it gave to the investigators is replete with lies and is totally lacking in credibility. For instance, the existence of the notorious Lamine Tunkara and Captain Taylor, the offending human smugglers mentioned in the report, is being called into question. The two people probably do not even exist in our country, and many Gambians have determined that they are made up names. But in addition Sir, apart from fishing canoes, there are no boats in the Gambia of the type the elusive Mr. Taylor can captain across the Atlantic Ocean to the Canary Islands, the destination of the would be immigrants. Finally, we understand the investigators never bothered to interview any of the eyewitnesses to this unimaginable cruelty on that fateful terrifying dark night when forty-four human beings were callously mowed down by the crackle of machine gun fire. Yahya Jammeh can now pay families of eight of his forty-four victims, but that does not make the crime go away, on the contrary, it should be the beginning of further investigation, and the ECOWAS court in Abuja, should take up the case. Sir, Yahya Jammeh, having admitted wrong doing of Gambian security forces, must be impelled to produce the perpetrators and himself to tell the people of Ghana, Gambia, the ECOWAS member states, Africa and the world, what really happened on that day so long ago.

Yours Sincerely

Mathew K. Jallow

Mathew K. Jallow, a Gambian writer, journalist, human rights advocate and political activist, has been exiled in the USA for more than a decade.

C.C
Ban ki-Moon, Secretary General, United Nations, New York
Dr Mohamed Ibn Chambas, President, ECOWAS, Abuja, Nigeria
President, The Africa Union, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Executive Director, Media Foundation for West Africa, Accra, Ghana
Executive Director, Amnesty International, London, U.K
Executive Director, Committee to Protect Journalists, New York
Senegalese Foreign Minister, Dakar, Republic of Senegal
Nigerian Foreign Minister, Abuja, Nigeria
South African Foreign Minister, Pretoria, South Africa
U.S Ambassador, Banjul, The Gambia
British High Commissioner, Banjul The Gambia
Chinese Ambassador, Dakar, Senegal
The Ghanaian Press

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