Sonko, who denies the accusations, appeared at Switzerland’s Federal Criminal Court in the southern city of Bellinzona.

“We have been waiting for this day to happen,” former political opponent Demba Dem, one of the plaintiffs, told AFP outside the court.

The trial is taking place under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows countries to prosecute alleged crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide regardless of where they were committed.

Sonko is accused by Swiss prosecutors of “having supported, participated in and failed to prevent systematic and generalised attacks as part of the repression carried out by the Gambian security forces against all opponents of the regime”.

The charges span from 2000 to 2016 and include nine counts of crimes against humanity.

He is accused of having “deliberately killed, tortured, raped and unlawfully deprived individuals of their liberty in a serious manner”.

“I want to see those who are accused (of committing) crimes brought to justice,” Demba Dem said.

He said he hoped “justice will be done” and the trial would “serve as a good example to other dictators” and deter atrocities.

– ‘Sick to the stomach’ –

Sonko, who turns 55 on Tuesday, was not expected to address the court during Monday’s opening hearings.

The proceedings are likely to last a month and a verdict is not expected before March. If convicted, Sonko could face life imprisonment.

Jammeh ruled The Gambia with an iron grip from 1994 to 2016, and Sonko was the West African nation’s interior minister from 2006 to 2016.

There are 10 complainants in the case, according to Trial International, a Geneva-based NGO, including eight “direct victims”.

The complainant parties arrived together at the court, brandishing signs reading: “Bring Jammeh and his accomplices to justice.”

Plaintiff Ramzia Diab, a former lawmaker, said outside court that she was “sick to the stomach”.

“I was shocked to hear his defence lawyer saying that Sonko does not accept that Yahya Jammeh was a dictator,” she told reporters, welling up.

“It’s bringing back all my emotions all over again! Because I was right there. I was tortured. I was molested.”

Fatou Camara, a former opponent, was also attending the trial.

“I didn’t see the dead body of my husband. I don’t know where they buried him,” she told journalists.

– Legal landmark –

Sonko has been in custody since his arrest in Switzerland in January 2017 after applying for asylum following his sacking.

He was detained after a complaint by Trial International.

Following a criminal investigation lasting more than six years, the Swiss attorney general’s office indicted Sonko in April 2023.

Trial International says he is the highest-ranking state official ever to be tried in Europe for international crimes under the principle of universal jurisdiction.

Alice Autin, of the NGO Human Rights Watch, said the case was “an important step in the search for justice and an end to impunity for everything that took place in The Gambia”.

Sonko is accused of committing the alleged crimes in his roles first within the army, then as inspector general of the police and finally as a government minister.

In 2011, Switzerland enshrined into law the right to judge the most serious crimes alleged to have taken place abroad — provided that the suspect is on Swiss soil.

Sonko’s lawyer Philippe Currat argued Monday that under the principle of non-retroactivity, his client should not be tried for any alleged acts before this date.

“(Sonko) requests you to decide to abandon the proceedings in respect of the acts described in the indictment which are alleged to have taken place before January 1, 2011,” Currat said.

Sonko is also seeking compensation of around 800,000 Swiss francs ($945,000) for his detention in Switzerland.

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Bai Lowe is accused of crimes against humanity, murder and attempted murder for his alleged role as a driver for the hit squad known as the Junglers.

Prosecutors have asked judges at the court in Celle to hand a life sentence to Lowe, who denies the charges against him.

The Junglers unit was “used by the then-president of Gambia to carry out illegal killing orders, among other things” with the aim of “intimidating the Gambian population and suppressing the opposition”, according to federal prosecutors.

The list of alleged crimes includes the 2004 killing of AFP correspondent Deyda Hydara, who was gunned down in his car on the outskirts of the Gambian capital Banjul on December 16, 2004.

Lowe is accused of helping to stop Hydara’s car and driving one of the killers in his own vehicle.

The trial, which began last year, is “the first to tackle human rights violations committed in The Gambia during the Jammeh era on the basis of universal jurisdiction”, according to Human Rights Watch.

The legal principle allows a foreign country to prosecute crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide, regardless of where they were committed.

– Journalist killing –

Hydara was an editor and co-founder of the independent daily The Point and a correspondent for AFP for over 30 years.

The father-of-four also worked as a Gambia correspondent for the NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and was considered a doyen among journalists in the tiny West African state.

In The Point, he wrote a widely read column, “Good morning, Mr President”, in which he expressed his views on Gambian politics.

According to investigations by RSF, Hydara was being spied on by Gambian intelligence services just before his death.

As well as having a role in Hydara’s killing, prosecutors accuse Lowe of involvement in the attempted assassination of lawyer Ousman Sillah, and the murder of Dawda Nyassi, a suspected opponent of the president.

Lowe arrived in Europe via Senegal in December 2012, saying he was seeking asylum as a political refugee who feared for his life under Jammeh. 

He was detained on the charges in Germany in March 2021.

– ‘Long arm of the law’ –

The evidence against Lowe includes a telephone interview he gave in 2013 to a US-based Gambian radio station, in which he described his participation in the attacks, according to police.

In a statement read out to the court, however, Lowe said he had merely repeated what other people had told him about the facts of the case to illustrate the cruelty of Jammeh’s government.

Jammeh ruled Gambia with an iron fist for 22 years but fled the country in January 2017 after losing a presidential election to relative unknown Adama Barrow. 

He refused to acknowledge the results but was forced out by a popular uprising and fled to Equatorial Guinea.

“The long arm of the law has caught up to Bai Lowe in Germany… as it will hopefully soon catch up to Jammeh himself,” said Reed Brody, a lawyer with the International Commission of Jurists who works with Jammeh’s victims.

Lowe is one of three alleged accomplices of Jammeh to be detained abroad, alongside former interior minister Ousman Sonko, under investigation in Switzerland since 2017, and another alleged former Jungler, Michael Sang Correa, indicted in June 2020 in the United States.

The Gambian government itself said earlier this year it was working with the regional ECOWAS bloc to set up a tribunal to try crimes committed under Jammeh.

The post Alleged Gambian death squad member awaits verdict in German trial appeared first on Digital Journal.

Less than a week later she was dead.

The infant is just one of 69 Gambian children to die of acute kidney failure since July in a series of cases linked to four Indian-made cough syrups.

The widening scandal has highlighted flaws in the tiny West African nation’s healthcare system, in turn raising questions about potential loopholes in world pharmaceutical trade.

“She could not eat anything and she was oozing blood from her mouth and nose”, Keita, a 33-year-old carwash attendant, told AFP, recounting his daughter’s suffering.

“At some point, I was praying for God to take her life.”

President Adama Barrow made a nationwide address on Saturday after the police launched an inquiry and health authorities were told to suspend the import licence of a suspected company.

Barrow also promised to update drugs-related laws and praised the work of the health ministry in preventing further deaths.

But fear and anger are mounting, and the death toll is still rising.

“President Barrow should sack the health minister, but instead of sacking him, he was praising the minister,” said Keita, the grieving father.

“We want justice for these children.”

Social media has been swamped by criticism of the healthcare system and by photos of the children who have died, most of whom were aged under five.

“It’s time for the government to step up and stop these products,” Mariama Kuyateh, a 30-year-old mother who lost her son Musa in September, told AFP.

“If they don’t, and other syrups enter the country, it will be terrible.”

– No test lab –

The deaths were catapulted to global prominence last Wednesday when the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) issued an alert over four syrups made by Maiden Pharmaceuticals of India.

Lab tests found “unacceptable amounts” of diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol, the WHO said.

The toxic impact from these substances includes “acute kidney injury which may lead to death,” the agency said.

The Gambian health authorities, after launching their own investigation in July, on September 23 ordered a recall of all medicines containing paracetamol or promethazine syrup.

They have cited E.coli bacteria as a possible cause of the deaths.

India’s health ministry said late Thursday it had been informed of the WHO’s findings last month and was awaiting the results of its own lab tests on the four drugs.

Maiden Pharmaceuticals was not licensed to distribute the four products in India and had only manufactured and exported them to The Gambia, it said.

“It is a usual practice that the importing country tests these imported products on quality parameters, and satisfies itself as to the quality of the products,” the ministry said.

But The Gambia has no national laboratory to test for drug quality and food safety — a lack that Barrow on Saturday vowed to redress.

Maiden Pharmaceuticals did not respond to AFP requests for comment after the WHO alert.

– ‘Failed miserably’ –

Domestic critics accuse Barrow of having failed to protect the public and standing by watchdogs who should have been sacked.

The opposition United Democratic Party (UDP) criticised Barrow’s “five-minute address” to a “traumatised nation left to wonder what other pharmaceuticals are on the market that may be fake or unsafe for use.”

Nancy Jallow, of an NGO called Global Bridges, said she was appalled that top officials such as Health Minister Ahmadou Lamin Samateh and the head of the Medicines Control Agency, Markieu Janneh Kaira, were still in their jobs.

“We signed a social contract with Adama Barrow and his number one role is to protect the most vulnerable, and he has failed miserably,” she told AFP.

She also called for a total halt to pharmaceutical imports “until Gambia’s government can build a facility that can test medications.”

Others voices, including the Gambia Bar Association, have insisted that the inquiry be conducted by independent experts.

– Weak healthcare –

Behind the political row is the reality of a country deep in poverty lacking many of the safeguards that elsewhere are taken for granted.

The Gambia is the smallest country in continental Africa, and nearly half of its population lives below the poverty line, according to the World Bank.

The country ranks a mere 174th out of 191 countries on the UN Human Development Index.

Its already weak health institutions were hit hard by Covid, with a 2020 UN assessment saying the pandemic had “exposed the shortcomings in the nation’s healthcare system”.

The UN flagged limited expertise, a shortage of basic equipment and a chronic lack of health professionals.

According to World Bank data, The Gambia in 2019 had just 0.1 physicians per 1,000 people — less than a twentieth of the numbers in Canada.

The Gambia’s under-five mortality rate is 49.4 deaths per 1,000 live births, according to UNICEF, compared to 3.7 deaths in Germany and 4.4 in France.

The post Grief and outrage in Gambia over cough syrup deaths appeared first on Digital Journal.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague threw out all of Myanmar’s objections to a case filed by the west African nation of The Gambia in 2019.

The decision paves the way for full hearings at the court on allegations over a bloody 2017 crackdown on the Rohingya by majority-Buddhist Myanmar. 

“The court finds that it has jurisdiction… to entertain the application filed by the republic of the Gambia, and that the application is admissible,” ICJ president Joan Donoghue said.

Hundreds of thousands of minority Rohingya fled the southeast Asian country during the operation five years ago, bringing with them harrowing reports of murder, rape and arson.

Around 850,000 Rohingya are languishing in camps in neighbouring Bangladesh while another 600,000 Rohingya remain in Myanmar’s southwestern Rakhine state.

Gambian Justice Minister Dawda Jallow told reporters outside the court he was “very pleased that the court has delivered justice”.

Several dozen Rohingya activists demonstrated outside the court while the judgment was read out.

– ‘Great moment for justice’ –

“This decision is a great moment for justice for Rohingya, and for all people of Burma,” said Tun Khin, president of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK, referring to the country by its former name.

“We are pleased that this landmark genocide trial can now finally begin in earnest.”

Myanmar’s representative, attorney general Thida Oo, said her country was now “looking forward to finding the best way to protect our people and our country.”

Mainly-Muslim The Gambia filed the case in November 2019 alleging that Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya breached the 1948 UN Genocide Convention.

Myanmar was originally represented at the ICJ by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, but she was ousted as civilian leader in a coup last year and is now in detention.

Myanmar had argued on several grounds that the court had no jurisdiction in the matter, and should dismiss the case while it is still in its preliminary stages.

But judges unanimously rejected Myanmar’s argument that Gambia was acting as a “proxy” of the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in the case.

Only states, and not organisations, are allowed to file cases at the ICJ, which has ruled on disputes between countries since just after World War II.

– ‘Brutality and cruelty’ –

They also unanimously dismissed Myanmar’s assertions that Gambia could not file the case because it was not a direct party to the alleged genocide, and that Myanmar had opted out of a relevant part of the genocide convention.

Finally they threw out by 15-1 Myanmar’s claim that there was no formal dispute at the time Gambia filed the case, and that the court therefore had no jurisdiction.

It could however take years for full hearings and a final judgment in the case.

“Action will be taken against the military and their brutality and cruelty. And this gives us hope for our suffering,” a Rohingya living in northern Rakhine state in Myanmar who requested anonymity told AFP.

A Rohingya woman living in a displaced persons camp near Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state, added: “This is not only good for us (Rohingya) but also for the rest of Myanmar people who are suffering at the hands of Myanmar military.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared in March that the Myanmar military’s violence against the Rohingya amounted to genocide.

The International Criminal Court, a war crimes tribunal based in The Hague, has also launched an investigation into the violence against the Rohingya.

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The suspect, identified by media as Bai Lowe, is accused of crimes against humanity, murder and attempted murder, including the 2004 killing of AFP correspondent Deyda Hydara.

Lowe was arrested in Hanover in March 2021 and will appear in court in the nearby town of Celle.

The trial is “the first to prosecute human rights violations committed in Gambia during the Jammeh era on the basis of universal jurisdiction”, according to Human Rights Watch.

Universal jurisdiction allows a foreign country to prosecute crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide, regardless of where they were committed.

Lowe is accused of being involved in two murders and one attempted murder while working as a driver for the hit squad known as the Junglers between December 2003 and December 2006.

“This unit was used by the then-president of Gambia to carry out illegal killing orders, among other things” with the aim of “intimidating the Gambian population and suppressing the opposition,” according to federal prosecutors.

Hydara, 58, was gunned down in his car on the outskirts of the Gambian capital Banjul on December 16, 2004.

Lowe is accused of helping to stop Hydara’s car and driving one of the killers in his own vehicle.

– Controversial column –

Hydara was an editor and co-founder of the independent daily The Point and a correspondent for AFP for over 30 years.

The father-of-four also worked as a Gambia correspondent for the NGO Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and was considered a doyen among journalists in the tiny West African state.

In his newspaper The Point, he had a widely read column, “Good morning, Mr President”, in which he expressed his views on Gambian politics.

According to investigations by RSF, Hydara was being spied on by Gambian intelligence services just before his death.

Hydara was a tenacious and “really stubborn” journalist, according to his son Baba Hydara, 45.

“He always made sure that he got sources about things happening and that helped him with his column,” Baba Hydara told AFP.

“There’s a lot of expectation and this is just a first battle won but the war is still on,” he said of the trial, expressing a hope that Jammeh will also “have (his) day in court”.

Prosecutors also accuse Lowe of driving members of the Junglers to a location in Banjul in 2003 to assassinate lawyer Ousman Sillah, who survived the attack with serious injuries.

His daughter Amie Sillah told a press conference ahead of the trial that she hoped it would shed light on “why, who and how they tried to kill my father”. 

– ‘Huge step’ –

In a third incident in 2006, Lowe is accused of driving members of the unit to a site near Banjul airport where they shot and killed Dawda Nyassi, a suspected opponent of the president. 

Jammeh ruled Gambia with an iron fist for 22 years but fled the country in January 2017 after losing a presidential election to relative unknown Adama Barrow. 

He refused to acknowledge the results but was forced out by a popular uprising and fled to Equatorial Guinea.

In July 2019, three former members of the Junglers, Malick Jatta, Omar Jallow and Amadou Badjie, admitted to Hydara’s killing.

All three former hitmen were freed from army custody two weeks after their appearance before Gambia’s Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC).

Lowe is the third alleged accomplice of Jammeh to be detained abroad. 

The other suspects are Gambia’s former interior minister, Ousman Sonko, under investigation in Switzerland since 2017, and another former Jungler, Michael Sang Correa, indicted in June 2020 in the United States.

The cases against them are “a huge step for finding truth and justice”, said Babaka Tracy Mputu of the human rights NGO TRIAL International.

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Suu Kyi personally presented Myanmar’s arguments at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) when the case was first heard in December 2019, but was ousted as civilian leader in a military coup last year.

The Nobel peace laureate, who faced criticism from rights groups for her involvement in the case, is now under house arrest and trial by the same generals she defended in The Hague.

In its “preliminary objections” on Monday, Myanmar will argue that the court has no jurisdiction over the case, and must throw it out before it moves on to substantive hearings.

Local Myanmar media said the junta has a new delegation led by Ko Ko Hlaing, international cooperation minister, and Thida Oo, attorney general, who will attend virtually.

Both have been hit with US sanctions over the coup.

The case brought by the mainly Muslim African nation of The Gambia accuses predominantly Buddhist Myanmar of genocide against the Rohingya minority over a bloody 2017 military crackdown.

The ICJ made a provisional order in January 2020 that Myanmar must take “all measures” to prevent the alleged genocide of the Rohingya while the years-long proceedings are underway.

– Bloody crackdown –

Gambia will make its counter-arguments on Wednesday.

Around 850,000 Rohingya are languishing in camps in neighbouring Bangladesh while another 600,000 Rohingya remain in Myanmar’s southwestern Rakhine state.

The ICJ was set up after World War II to rule on disputes between UN member states. Its judgments are binding but it has no real means to enforce them.

The Rohingya case at the ICJ has been complicated by the coup that ousted Suu Kyi and her civilian government, and triggered mass protests and a bloody military crackdown. More than 1,500 civilians have been killed, according to a local monitoring group.

Suu Kyi now faces trial herself in Myanmar on a raft of charges that could see her jailed for more than 150 years.

Ahead of the hearing, the shadow “National Unity Government” dominated by lawmakers from Suu Kyi’s ousted party said it, not the junta, “is the proper representative of Myanmar at the ICJ in the case”.

It also rejects Myanmar’s preliminary objections, saying the hearings for these should be cancelled and the court should quickly get down to the hearing of the substantive case.

The NUG holds no territory and has not been recognised by any foreign government, and has been declared a “terrorist” organisation by the junta.

The Gambia accuses Myanmar of breaching the 1948 UN genocide convention.

Its case is backed by the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, Canada and the Netherlands.

burs-dk/yad

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Rights groups have long called for Jammeh to be prosecuted for alleged abuses — including murder, torture and rape — during his 22 years in power in the West African nation. 

A truth commission, the TRRC, set up to probe the allegations handed President Adama Barrow its final report Thursday and recommended the government pursue criminal charges.

TRRC Chairman Lamin Sise said the report names those who “bear the greatest responsibility for human rights violations and abuses”.   

“To forgive and forget… would not only undermine reconciliation but also constitute a massive and egregious cover-up of the crimes committed,” he said in a statement.

Sise did not specify whether Jammeh himself is named. 

However, a statement from 11 Gambian and international rights groups said “there is no doubt that Yahya Jammeh was at the top of that list”.

Reed Brody, who works with Jammeh-era victims, also stated that the report “begins the countdown to the day Yahya Jammeh will have to face his victims”.

The findings of the truth panel come after more than two years of hearings into Jammeh-era crimes. 

Witnesses gave chilling evidence about state-sanctioned torture, death squads, rape and witch hunts, often at the hands of the “Junglers”, as Jammeh’s death squads were known.

The TRRC has not been empowered to prosecute those responsible for crimes, and the contents of its report will not immediately be made public. 

Barrow is expected to release a white paper within six months on how to implement its recommendations.

Addressing a news conference in the capital Banjul, the president promised to deliver the white paper on time and assured victims that “justice will be done”.

– Political race –

Jammeh seized power in 1994 as part of a bloodless military coup in The Gambia — the smallest country in mainland Africa.

He was then repeatedly re-elected in disputed circumstances until Barrow, who was then a relative unknown, defeated him at the ballot box in December 2016.

After a six-week crisis that led to military intervention by other West African states, Jammeh was forced into exile in Equatorial Guinea.

Despite the magnitude of abuse allegations facing Jammeh, the 56-year-old retains a considerable following in The Gambia.  

Many supporters are pushing for his return from exile.

His influence has been a key issue in the run-up to a presidential election on December 4 — the first since the ex-dictator’s departure.

Jammeh addressed a campaign rally remotely this month, arguing that Barrow had “rigged” the 2016 elections. 

Barrow, for his part, sought an alliance with Jammeh’s APRC party in September —  a move viewed by some as an electoral ploy.

Rights activists denounced the alliance, which also stirred fears that it could lead to Jammeh’s return.

But Jammeh subsequently disavowed the electoral pact, which he said was taken without his knowledge, and his supporters have formed a rival party. 

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President Adama Barrow said last week he would self-isolate for two weeks after Vice President Isatou Touray tested positive.

Finance Minister Mambureh Njie, Petroleum and Energy Minister Fafa Sanyang and Agriculture Minister Amie Fabureh “have tested positive” for the virus, the presidency said in a tweet on Sunday.

Health authorities in the former British colony of some two million people have recorded 498 coronavirus cases to date, with nine fatalities since its first case was reported in March.

The Gambia closed air and land borders in March. It has also restricted public transport, shut schools and markets, and made face masks compulsory.

But as with other poor countries in the region, there are fears that the tiny nation is ill-equipped for a large outbreak.

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Michael Sang Correa, 41, is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit torture and six counts of inflicting torture on specific individuals, according to a June 2 indictment made public on Thursday.

“With this arrest, we are not only holding accountable a man who has allegedly committed horrific acts of torture against his own people, but demonstrating to the People of The Gambia, and indeed the entire world, that the United States stands for the rule of law and against those who abuse human rights,” Jason Dunn, the top prosecutor in Colorado, said in a statement.

Correa had entered the US in December 2016 to work as a bodyguard for Gambia’s vice president, who was visiting the United Nations, Dunn told reporters.

He stayed in the country and moved to Denver at some point after Gambian President Yahya Jammeh was voted out of office, officials said.

While in his home country Correa had been part of a military unit known as the Junglers, which operated outside the army’s chain of command and took orders from Jammeh, according to the indictment.

In 2006, the indictment alleges, Jammeh’s government learned of a plot to overthrow him and arrested a number of individuals suspected of taking part in the attempted coup.

The suspects were taken to Mile 2 Prison where Correa and others tortured them over a period of two months (April and March 2006), the indictment says.

Some of the prisoners had molten plastic or acid dripped on their bodies while others were beaten up with pipes, wires and branches, according to the charge sheet.

“The co-conspirators sometimes covered the victims’ heads with plastic bags restricting their ability to breathe and subjected some victims to electrocution on various parts of their bodies,” authorities said. “The indictment further alleges that one victim was suspended over the ground in a rice bag and beaten severely by the co-conspirators.”

Correa had been in federal custody in Colorado since last year after being arrested by Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE).

Authorities said investigators managed to track him down in the US thanks to communication and financial trails that led to his arrest.

Jammeh ruled Gambia with an iron fist for 22 years, but fled in January 2017 after losing a presidential election to relative unknown Adama Barrow.

Jammeh first refused to acknowledge the result before being forced out of power by a popular uprising.

He has been living in exile in Equatorial Guinea.

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The Maldivian government said Wednesday it will formally join the mainly Muslim African state of The Gambia in challenging Myanmar’s 2017 military crackdown that sent around 740,000 Rohingya fleeing into neighbouring Bangladesh.

In a unanimous ruling last month, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Buddhist-majority Myanmar to implement emergency measures to prevent the genocide of Rohingya — pending a full case that could take years.

Clooney successfully represented former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed and secured a UN decision that his 2015 jailing for 13 years was illegal.

With the fall of strongman president Abdulla Yameen in 2018, Nasheed as well as several other dissidents in the Sunni Muslim nation of 340,000 have been cleared of any wrongdoing.

Nasheed is currently the atoll nation’s speaker in the national legislature.

The government said it welcomed the ICJ’s decision to order provisional measures to secure the rights of victims in Myanmar and prevent the destruction of evidence in the ongoing case.

“Accountability for genocide in Myanmar is long overdue and I look forward to working on this important effort to seek judicial remedies for Rohingya survivors,” Clooney was quoted as saying by the Maldivian government.

Thousands are suspected to have been killed in the Rohingya crackdown and refugees brought widespread reports of rape and arson by Myanmar’s military and local Buddhist militias.

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