Bodies discovered of 12 west Africans human rights groups say were killed by paramilitary hit squad under orders of Yahya Jammeh

A mass grave containing the bodies of 12 west Africans allegedly killed by a paramilitary force controlled by the former president Yahya Jammeh has been identified near the Gambian capital, Banjul.



The “Junglers”, a notorious hit squad that answered only to Jammeh, executed 54 people who were trying to make their way to Spain by sea in 2005, suspecting them of being mercenaries trying to overthrow the government, according to human rights groups that interviewed 30 Gambian officials.



The only survivor of the massacre told the Guardian that he and his friends were arrested at sea and tortured before being driven to a forest, where they were killed.



“Once we entered the navy boat, the torture started,” said Martin Kyere, who is from Ghana. “When we landed in Banjul, we found a lot of military men waiting on the shore, armed with guns and cutlasses.”



He said that on the way to the forest, when a fellow captive complained that he was in pain, one of the military men lunged at him with his cutlass. “His arm nearly fell off his body,” Kyere said. “All of us were tied by our hands. I succeeded in untying myself and fled.”



Just before he jumped off, his friends whispered to him, asking him to find their families if he made it back to Ghana, and tell them what had happened. As he ran, behind him he heard the others crying, “Oh God, help us!” Then he heard gunshots.



Over the course of a week, near Banjul as well as Jammeh’s home town of Kanilai, the Junglers killed all 54 people, according to the human rights groups. Most of their bodies have never been found.



For this crime Human Rights Watch and Trial International are building a case to prosecute Jammeh, who remains in exile in Equatorial Guinea after losing the 2016 election. He initially conceded victory, then changed his mind and holed himself up in the presidential palace, before finally being persuaded to leave, taking with him a fleet of luxury cars.



A former military officer who in 1994 led the overthrow of a democratically elected government, Jammeh presided over a brutal regime characterised by allegations of human rights violations, including claims of extrajudicial killings and torture.



After beatings, black potions and brutality, the Gambia seeks a fresh start | Ruth Maclean Read more

The Gambia is preparing to launch a truth, reconciliation and reparations commission to examine crimes committed between 1994 and 2017, but with its justice system being radically reformed and very little money, it is unlikely that the small west African country would be able to prosecute Jammeh even if it could secure his extradition.



So Human Rights Watch and Trial International are seeking other options.



“We’re looking for the Ghanaian government to extradite him to Ghana to try him for this crime,” said Reed Brody, counsel at Human Rights Watch.



A senior police source who did not want to be named told the Guardian that he saw some of the victims at the police station that day in July 2005.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Families of victims of the alleged massacre, pictured in Kumasi, Ghana. Photograph: Reed Brody

“I found about 12 of them, looking shaken and terrified. There are indications that they were beaten,” he said. “I left them there.”



He took the Guardian to the crime scene he was later told to investigate in Brufut, near Banjul. “When I arrived at the scene, I found three dead bodies here,” he said, pointing at the scene of thick shrubbery, a few metres off the road. Searching further, he discovered six more.



The police source said he was worried the authorities were “not showing enough interest” in the matter. “I informed some police authorities about the mass grave but no action has been taken,” said the source. “I think there are still a lot of people in the system who are loyal to the former government.”



Martin Kyere said that as he fled, his captors shot at him. But after three days in the bush, he made it to neighbouring Senegal and then to the Ghanaian embassy.



When he got home, he went to find his dead friends’ relatives, as they had asked. But it was a terrible task.



“Anywhere I go to relate the news, people will be crying. Some had wives and kids.”

</s>A paramilitary unit controlled by then-Gambian president, Yahya Jammeh, summarily executed more than 50 Ghanaian, Nigerian, and other West African migrants in July 2005, Human Rights Watch and TRIAL International have said.

Interviews with 30 former Gambian officials, including 11 officers directly involved in the incident, reveal that the migrants, who were bound for Europe but were suspected of being mercenaries intent on overthrowing Jammeh, were murdered after having been detained by Jammeh’s closest deputies in the army, navy, and police forces. The witnesses identified the “Junglers,” a notorious unit that took its orders directly from Jammeh, as those who carried out the killings.

“The West African migrants weren’t murdered by rogue elements, but by a paramilitary death squad taking orders from President Jammeh,” said Reed Brody, counsel at Human Rights Watch. “Jammeh’s subordinates then destroyed key evidence to prevent international investigators from learning the truth.”

On Wednesday, Martin Kyere, the sole known Ghanaian survivor; the families of the disappeared; the family of Saul N’dow, another Ghanaian killed under Jammeh; and Ghanaian human rights organizations called on the Ghanaian government to investigate the new evidence and potentially seek Jammeh’s extradition and prosecution in Ghana.

Jammeh’s 22-year rule was marked by widespread abuses, including forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and arbitrary detention. He sought exile in Equatorial Guinea in January 2017 after losing the December 2016 presidential election to Adama Barrow.

The insiders interviewed by TRIAL International and Human Rights Watch include some of the highest-ranking security commanders in the Gambian government at the time, as well as several officials present at the arrest, detention, and transfer of the migrants, a Jungler who witnessed the killings, and two who participated in a subsequent cover-up. Another Jungler who witnessed the killings was interviewed on the radio.

They said that the migrants – including some 44 Ghanaians and several Nigerians – were arrested in July 2005 at a beach where they had landed, then transferred to the Gambian Naval Headquarters in Banjul, the capital. They were detained there in the presence of the inspector general of police, the director general of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), the chief of the defense staff, and the commander of the National Guards. At least two of them were in telephone contact with Jammeh during the operation. The head and several members of the paramilitary Junglers were also there.

The officials divided the migrants into groups and then turned them over to the Junglers. Over one week, the Junglers summarily executed them near Banjul and along the Senegal-Gambia border near Jammeh’s hometown of Kanilai.

Kyere was detained in a Banjul police station, then driven into the forest. In February 2018, he explained to Human Rights Watch and TRIAL International how he escaped, just before other migrants were apparently killed.

“We were in the back of a pickup truck,” he said. “One man complained that the wires binding us were too tight and a soldier with a cutlass sliced him on the shoulder, cutting his arm, which bled profusely. It was then that I thought, ‘We’re going to die.’ But as the truck went deeper into the forest, I was able to get my hands free. I jumped out from the pickup and started to run into the forest. The soldiers shot toward me but I was able to hide. I then heard shots from the pickup and the cry, in Twi [Ghanaian language], ‘God save us!’”

Kyere helped the Ghanaian authorities identify many of the dead and travelled around Ghana to locate their families and promote efforts to seek justice.

Despite measures in ensuing years by Ghana as well as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the United Nations (UN) to investigate the case, no arrests have ever been made.

The Bulletin of the UN Department of Public Affairs said that an ECOWAS/UN report, never made public, concluded that the Gambian government was not “directly or indirectly complicit” in the deaths and disappearances but rather that “rogue elements” in Gambia’s security services “acting on their own” were probably responsible.

The new evidence makes clear, however, that those responsible for the killings were the Junglers, who were not rogue elements, but a disciplined unit operating under Jammeh.

In October 2017, Gambian and international rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, and TRIAL International, launched the “Campaign to Bring Yahya Jammeh and his Accomplices to Justice” (#Jammeh2Justice), which calls for prosecuting Jammeh and others who bear the greatest responsibility for his government’s crimes under international fair trial standards.

President Barrow of The Gambia has suggested that he would seek Jammeh’s extradition from Equatorial Guinea if his prosecution was recommended by the country’s Truth Reconciliation and Reparations Commission, which is expected to begin work in the next few months with an initial two-year mandate. The government and international activists and academics have said that the political, institutional and security conditions do not yet exist in The Gambia for a fair trial of Yahya Jammeh which would contribute to Gambia’s stability.

President Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea said in January that he would “analyze [any extradition request] with [his] lawyers.” A week later, however, he said “we have to protect him [Jammeh], we have to respect him as a former African head of state, because that is what is going to ensure that the other heads of state of Africa who have to leave power do not fear for subsequent harassment.”

Ghanaian groups noted that the UN Convention against Torture, which Equatorial Guinea has ratified, requires a country in whose territory a torture suspect is found to refer the case for investigation or extradite that person.

“Our investigation has enabled us to get closer to the truth about this horrible massacre,” said Benedict De Moerloose, head of Criminal Law and Investigations for TRIAL International. “The time has now come to deliver justice for the victims and their families.”

On July 22, 2005, Gambian police forces arrested approximately 50-56 foreigners in Barra, a town facing Banjul on the opposite shore of the River Gambia. It is difficult to determine the numbers with certainty but it appears the group included about 44 Ghanaians, as many as ten Nigerians, two or three Ivoirians, two Senegalese, and one Togolese. The detained men and women, as well as one additional Gambian who was later arrested, were believed to have been killed in the ensuing week and buried near Banjul and Kanilai. The disfigured bodies of eight of the migrants were found in Brufut, on the outskirts of Banjul, on July 23, the day after their capture. No other bodies have been recovered.

Between March 2017 and May 2018, Human Rights Watch and TRIAL International interviewed 30 former Gambian security officials both inside and outside of Gambia, including 11 officers directly involved in the incident, as well as Kyere, the survivor, another Ghanaian who left the group shortly before the original arrest, the families of 15 of the Ghanaian victims, and two of the Ghanaian investigators. The organizations also translated a long radio interview with a former Jungler, Bai Lowe.

The migrants – including two women – had set off from a beach in Saly Mbour in Senegal in a hired motorized canoe hoping to meet up with a boat that would take them to Europe. They were unable to make contact with the boat, however, and landed in Barra, where they were arrested on July 22 – “Revolution Day” celebrating Jammeh’s 1994 coup. “They lined us up, pointing guns at us, and marched us to the Barra police,” Kyere said.

Several officials interviewed said that Gambian intelligence had previously received information regarding a planned coup by mercenaries and may have mistaken the migrants for these mercenaries.

Jammeh and his ministers, the chiefs of Gambia’s security forces, and civilian dignitaries were attending a festival at the July 22 Square in Banjul. Several witnesses said that inspector general of police, Ousman Sonko – who is currently detained in Switzerland on charges of crimes against humanity – was at the ceremony and received a phone call that foreigners had been apprehended. Officers who were there said that Jammeh was informed and he got up and left with his security detail for his nearby compound.

Witnesses said that Sonko asked the Navy to transfer the group by boat from Barra to the Naval Headquarters in Banjul. The naval boat Fatima I had to make two trips. Kyere, who was on the second crossing, observed when they were reunited at headquarters that most of those on the first trip had been beaten and stripped of their possessions. One commander said that at least two of the high-ranking officials at the headquarters, Sonko and the National Intelligence Agency director, Daba Marenah, called Jammeh from the Naval Headquarters.

The head and several members of the Junglers, an unofficial paramilitary unit of about 12 to 25 soldiers drawn from the State Guard, were also at the Naval Headquarters. The Junglers took their name from the fact that some members had received jungle survivor training. They were also known as the “Patrol Team” because their original duties included patrolling the Gambia-Senegal border around the presidential residence in Kanilai. The State Guards from which the Junglers were drawn played a key role in protecting Jammeh, and they received frequent and intense training, from Iran, Libya and Taiwan, among others. From their creation in 2003-2004 until Jammeh’s fall in 2017, the Junglers were implicated in serious human rights violations, including torture, sexual violence, enforced disappearances, and killings.

Throughout the Junglers’ existence, Jammeh was in regular communication, often daily, with its leader, who at the time of the migrant killings was Tumbul Tamba. One former Jungler said Tamba received direct operational orders from Jammeh and would then convene the Junglers to brief them on the operation and to communicate Jammeh’s orders. “The big man said to ‘finish them,’” was how Tamba would convey orders to kill, said the former Jungler. “Tamba reported after every mission to the president.”

On July 23, the migrants were divided into groups and taken by buses to several locations around Banjul, including the Junglers’ unofficial headquarters, and several police stations and army barracks. Kyere said he was held at the Bundung Police Station. The police also arrested Lamin Tunkara, a Gambian who was working with the captain of the vessel which was to transport the migrants to Europe. Tunkara was later taken in the same pickup truck from which Kyere escaped into the forest. His family has never seen Tunkara again.

A first group of migrants was taken on July 23 from the Kanifing police station in two vehicles to Brufut, on the outskirts of Banjul. A former Jungler said that eight migrants were then executed by seven Junglers, assisted by several regular soldiers, with machetes, axes, knives, and sticks and left in the bushes near “Ghanatown” in Brufut. The migrants were handcuffed while they were slaughtered. A former police commissioner who arrived on the scene confirmed that the bodies had been badly beaten. “One had had his head smashed with something heavy…another had his face broken completely… [a third] had blood coming out of his ears, nose, eyes.” Two former Junglers said that the migrants were killed this way following a Jammeh directive issued after the 2004 murder of a journalist, Deyda Hydara, not to use guns in killings in Gambia. The discovery of eight dead bodies with cuts and trauma wounds was reported in the Gambian press.

Based on numerous accounts, two of the Ghanaian migrants in that first group escaped during this time and sought refuge in Ghanatown, but were turned over by local leaders to the police. They have not been heard from since.

The other migrants, probably about 45, were held for a longer period in several other places of detention around Banjul, apparently while further investigations were carried out. About a week later, various Junglers rounded them up and took them to the town of Kuloro, then took them in several pickup trucks and other vehicles toward Kanilai.

Just across Gambia’s southern border in the Casamance region of Senegal, in an operation overseen by Tamba, the Junglers’ head, two Junglers covered the heads of migrants in plastic and shot them. Since it was outside the Gambia, the Junglers could use their guns. These bodies were dumped in nearby wells, including one in an abandoned village in Senegal, and another near Jammeh’s compound in Kanilai. One of the Junglers involved told Human Rights Watch and TRIAL International that the wells were covered with stones. The area across the border had been used by the Junglers as a killing and dumping ground in at least two other cases.

Bai Lowe, one of the former Junglers, said in a radio interview:

Tumbul [head of the Junglers] said let the guys [the two Junglers] say, “We are going to kill you in the interest of our nation.” He said once the guys say that, then the boys are not responsible but The Gambia as a nation will be responsible…There are these old wells in the bush [in Senegal] belong to Fulas [a pastoralist ethnic group] where they fetch water for their cows. Two guys will just bring you to the well, execute you and throw you in the well. That is where I saw them use a pistol to kill…They will just put a plastic bag over your head, shoot you and throw you in the well…They killed up to 40 people.”

One of the migrants escaped at this point and was recaptured at Kankurang near Kanilai. According to Bai Lowe, the escapee was cut to death with a cutlass by another Jungler and his dismembered body was put in a plastic sack.

After these killings, Jammeh gave two bulls to the Naval Headquarters. A former inspector general of police who later investigated the case surmised to Human Rights Watch and TRIAL International that this was to thank the Navy for its “good work.”

Kyere said that he was loaded into the back of a white double-cabin pickup truck, along with seven other migrants. The truck went first on a highway, then on a dirt road and into a forest, where Kyere jumped from the truck. He spent days wandering in the forest before he came to a village in Senegal where he was given some food. From there, he went to the town of Bounkiling and reported the incident to the Senegalese gendarmerie.

He was treated at the local hospital and given money and travel papers so he could go to Dakar. There, he helped the Ghanaian embassy identify the people he had travelled with and who were believed to have been killed. Back in Ghana, he located many of the victims’ families and, together with the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), campaigned for full accountability, organizing marches and demonstrations that kept the issue alive.

International Investigations and the Destruction of Evidence

The 2005 killings quickly became a source of tension between Ghana and Gambia, particularly after Gambian authorities refused to cooperate with several attempts by Ghana to investigate the matter. During an August 2005 visit to Gambia by a delegation led by the then-foreign minister – and now president, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the Gambian foreign minister suggested that the eight migrants whose bodies were found may have been victims of ritual murder. According to the Ghanaians, Jammeh “categorically denied any Gambian Government involvement.”

The Gambian government agreed that a Ghanaian investigative team could visit the country, which it did in March 2006, but, according to an excerpt of the unpublished Ghanaian report printed in a Ghanaian newspaper, “[t]he Ghana team’s attempt to meet with high-level Gambian officials whose functions were related to the subject matter of the team’s visit became entangled in layers of bureaucracy…and it became evidently clear the Gambians were not going to be faithful to their commitment to jointly investigate the subject matter.” By the time a joint ECOWAS/United Nations team was formed in 2008 to investigate the killings, the Gambian government had allegedly already taken steps to destroy evidence related to the case.

Three different sources stated that Essa Badjie, who was appointed inspector general of police in July 2008, destroyed the diary log of the Barra police station and made a new log and backdated it. Later, after Badjie was imprisoned following a falling out with Jammeh, he told a friend that Jammeh personally instructed him to forge the records.

Shortly before the ECOWAS/UN mission arrived in Gambia, Badjie and the crime management coordinator met several of the high-ranking officials who had been involved in the case in 2005 at Police Headquarters and warned them against saying anything that would incriminate the government.

“Badjie explained that ‘The Gambia belongs to all of us, we should not see The Gambia defamed or destroyed by anyone, we shall do our best for the country,’” one former senior military officer said. “[Badjie] told me an investigation team was coming to investigate the Ghanaians. He wanted [us] not to say anything that would jeopardize the country’s integrity.”

Another former senior military officer said: “The message was ‘remove incriminating evidence.’ They asked for the log book of the boat.” The two seized and destroyed the relevant sections of the naval log books.

In 2009, Gambia and Ghana signed a Memorandum of Understanding acknowledging that the Gambian government was not complicit in the killings but would make contributions to the families as a humanitarian gesture. Jammeh said that the findings “vindicated” his government. At the time, Ghana’s foreign minister, Alhaji Muhammad Mumuni, expressed skepticism about the findings, but accepted the report to bring closure to the families and restore relations between the two countries. Gambia paid US$500,000 in compensation to Ghana, which gave 10,000 Ghana cedis (roughly US$6,800 at 2009 rates) to each of the approximately 27 victim’s families. Six bodies were returned to Ghana. Human Rights Watch and TRIAL International have not been able to ascertain whether the transferred bodies were, in fact, those of the murdered Ghanaians.

In the Memorandum of Understanding following the report, “[b]oth Ghana and Gambia pledged to pursue through all available means the arrests and prosecution of all those involved in the deaths and disappearances of the Ghanaians and other ECOWAS nationals, especially those identified as culprits in the report.” No arrests have ever been made in connection with the case, however.

Stay updated with the latest Nigerian news from Information Nigeria</s>A paramilitary unit controlled by former Gambian president Yahya Jammeh was accused on Wednesday by rights groups of being behind the killings of more than 50 West African migrants in 2005.

Human Rights Watch and TRIAL International said they interviewed 30 former Gambian officials, including 11 officers, and a survivor of the round-up as part of a joint investigation.

The migrants – 44 Ghanaians and several Nigerians, Senegalese, as well as a Togolese — were arrested on a beach in Gambia while trying to reach Europe, suspected of being mercenaries wanting to overthrow Jammeh.

According to a joint statement by the NGOs, they were detained in the capital Banjul and handed over in groups to the “Junglers”, a notorious paramilitary unit, and executed.

“The West African migrants weren’t murdered by rogue elements, but by a paramilitary death squad taking orders from President Jammeh,” said Reed Brody, a legal advisor at Human Rights Watch.

“Jammeh’s subordinates then destroyed key evidence to prevent international investigators from learning the truth.”

A joint report by the Economic Community of West African States and the UN, which was not made public, concluded in 2009 that the killings and disappearances were carried out by rogue members within the Gambian security services, with no credible evidence to suggest they were acting on orders from superiors.

“The new evidence makes clear, however, that those responsible for the killings were the Junglers,” HRW and TRIAL said in their statement on Wednesday.

In the statement, Martin Kyere, the only known Ghanaian survivor, told how his group was tied up in the back of a pick-up truck.

“It was then that I thought, ‘We’re going to die,” he said.

But he managed to get free and escape into the forest, and later helped Ghanaian authorities identify many of the victims.

Jammeh, whose 22-year-rule was marked by numerous human rights violations, lost the presidential election in December 2016 to opposition leader Adama Barrow.

He fled the country the following month for Equatorial Guinea, where he finally conceded and handed over power.</s>A Ghanaian man is leading a campaign to bring The Gambia’s former leader Yahya Jammeh to justice over the murder of 56 migrants who were mistaken for coup plotters, writes the BBC’s Alex Duval Smith.

Martin Kyere leapt from the pick-up truck into the darkness. Bullets whistled around him as he ran for his life through the thick Gambian forest. He fell. He picked himself up. He dodged the soldiers’ searchlight.

He promised himself not to rest until Mr Jammeh was brought to justice.

Thirteen years later and now living in his native Ghana, Mr Kyere is the key witness in an international effort to bring The Gambia’s former president to trial for what was probably the single largest mass killing during the 22-year reign of terror.

Meanwhile, Mr Jammeh has lived in Equatorial Guinea since January 2017. He went into exile there under a regionally-brokered deal after losing the December 2016 presidential election to Adama Barrow.

Mr Kyere is the only known survivor out of 56 West Africans – most of them Ghanaian and Nigerian – who were murdered in The Gambia on or around 22 July 2005.

”It is my mission, on behalf of my friends, we want justice,” Mr Kyere, now aged 37, told the BBC in his home town in central Ghana.

In 2005, Mr Kyere, by selling shoes in Ghana and Ivory Coast, had saved up money to travel to Senegal and onwards to Europe.

He boarded a pirogue in Senegal’s capital Dakar. It ran out of fuel and came ashore in The Gambia. The travellers were arrested, detained for a week in The Gambia’s capital Banjul, and beaten.

”When we asked the police officers why we were there, they just said the orders came from above. For a long time we thought we would just be deported.”

But the migrants were handed over to ”the junglers” – paramilitaries whose torture and killings had helped keep Mr Jammeh in power since he grabbed it on 22 July 1994.

Some people believe that in the run-up to the 22 July ”revolution” commemorations, the migrants were thought by the paranoid regime to be mercenaries, acting on behalf of coup plotters.

Mr Kyere recounts their final journey in meticulous detail: ”Eight of us were loaded into the pick-up. They used one rope to tie four people, each with his hands on his back.

”A Nigerian who was a Muslim, began to pray “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest). This annoyed them. They sliced his back with a cutlass. He never raised his head again.

”The pick-up drove deeper and deeper into the forest. One of us complained of pain in his arm. A soldier slashed his other arm with the cutlass and said ‘which is more painful?’ Now the pick-up was full of blood. We all knew we were going to die and we tried to release ourselves.”

Mr Kyere succeeded: ”The others said ‘go and tell the world what Jammeh has done to us’. I jumped from the pick-up and I heard a voice – ‘who is that?’ – but I did not look back. I was running. The bullets passed over me.

”I heard the screams in Twi, ”awu rade gye yen” (Oh God save us), and the gunshots followed – so I realised the guys had been killed.”

Mr Kyere staggered through the forest. He hid from people for fear of being re-arrested.

After several days, he asked for help in a village. He was shown the way to the Senegalese border.

Mr Kyere eventually travelled back to Ghana, sought help from the authorities and set about travelling, with few means, hundreds of kilometres around his country to track down the relatives of his lost comrades. He has found 25 families so far, including that of Peter Mensah who left behind his wife and three children.

If Mr Jammeh is to be tried, lawyers will have to win his extradition from Equatorial Guinea.

Reed Brody, legal counsel for campaign group Human Rights Watch, which is supporting Mr Kyere’s campaign along with Trial International, says Ghana would be an ideal country for the trial because it has a strong justice system and provisions to prosecute people for the ”enforced disappearance” of Ghanaian citizens anywhere in the world.

”We are presenting evidence that approximately 44 Ghanaian citizens were killed by a death squad that took its orders from Jammeh,” said the US lawyer.

”The only previous official investigation concluded that the migrants were probably killed by ‘rogue elements’ acting on their own.

“Since the fall of Mr Jammeh, we have been able to interview 30 former officials, 11 of whom were directly involved, and it is clear that the migrants were not killed by rogue elements but by the ‘junglers’ who took their orders directly from Jammeh.”

However, a 2009 joint investigation by the United Nations and the West African regional group, the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), concluded that Mr Jammeh and his government were not to blame for ordering the killings and that “rogue elements” in the security services were responsible.

The Gambia returned eight bodies, and paid $500,000 (£420,000) to cover burial costs. The remaining bodies have never been found.

Mr Brody advised victims of former Chadian ruler Hissene Habre, who is a serving a life sentence in Senegal for atrocities committed during his eight-year rule. He is determined to ensure that Mr Jammeh also stands trial.

Mr Brody says if Mr Kyere’s case is heard in Ghana this would embolden a nascent campaign for justice by more than 1,000 of the Jammeh regime’s victims in The Gambia.

But he cautions that ”the legal and security conditions do not exist” for a trial in The Gambia at the moment.

Mr Kyere is a gentle-mannered, outwardly unassuming man, who still sells shoes. But when he opens his mouth to speak, his voice is like a thunder box for justice.

He does not feel guilt for being the only known survivor.

”I am alive for a reason and that reason is to obtain justice – to know one day why Yahya Jammeh grabbed us and decided to kill us in an unlawful way.”</s>A Ghanaian man is leading a campaign to bring The Gambia's former leader Yahya Jammeh to justice over the murder of 55 migrants who were mistaken for coup plotters, writes the BBC's Alex Duval Smith.

Martin Kyere leapt from the pick-up truck into the darkness. Bullets whistled around him as he ran for his life through the thick Gambian forest. He fell. He picked himself up. He dodged the soldiers' searchlight.

He promised himself not to rest until Mr Jammeh was brought to justice.

Thirteen years later and now living in his native Ghana, Mr Kyere is the key witness in an international effort to bring The Gambia's former president to trial for what was probably the single largest mass killing during the 22-year reign of terror.

Meanwhile, Mr Jammeh has lived in Equatorial Guinea since January 2017. He went into exile there under a regionally-brokered deal after losing the December 2016 presidential election to Adama Barrow.

Ghanaian shoe seller vows to bring Yahya Jammeh to justice

Mr Kyere is the only known survivor out of 56 West Africans - most of them Ghanaian and Nigerian - who were murdered in The Gambia on or around 22 July 2005.

''It is my mission, on behalf of my friends, we want justice,'' Mr Kyere, now aged 37, told the BBC in his home town in central Ghana.

In 2005, Mr Kyere, by selling shoes in Ghana and Ivory Coast, had saved up money to travel to Senegal and onwards to Europe.

He boarded a pirogue in Senegal's capital Dakar. It ran out of fuel and came ashore in The Gambia. The travellers were arrested, detained for a week in The Gambia's capital Banjul, and beaten.

''When we asked the police officers why we were there, they just said the orders came from above. For a long time we thought we would just be deported.''

But the migrants were handed over to ''the junglers'' - paramilitaries whose torture and killings had helped keep Mr Jammeh in power since he grabbed it on 22 July 1994.

Some people believe that in the run-up to the 22 July ''revolution'' commemorations, the migrants were thought by the paranoid regime to be mercenaries, acting on behalf of coup plotters.

Mr Kyere recounts their final journey in meticulous detail: ''Eight of us were loaded into the pick-up. They used one rope to tie four people, each with his hands on his back.

''A Nigerian who was a Muslim, began to pray "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest). This annoyed them. They sliced his back with a cutlass. He never raised his head again.

''The pick-up drove deeper and deeper into the forest. One of us complained of pain in his arm. A soldier slashed his other arm with the cutlass and said 'which is more painful?' Now the pick-up was full of blood. We all knew we were going to die and we tried to release ourselves.''

Mr Kyere succeeded: ''The others said 'go and tell the world what Jammeh has done to us'. I jumped from the pick-up and I heard a voice - 'who is that?' - but I did not look back. I was running. The bullets passed over me.

''I heard the screams in Twi, ''awu rade gye yen'' (Oh God save us), and the gunshots followed - so I realized the guys had been killed.''

Mr Kyere staggered through the forest. He hid from people for fear of being re-arrested.

After several days, he asked for help in a village. He was shown the way to the Senegalese border.

Mr Kyere eventually travelled back to Ghana, sought help from the authorities and set about travelling, with few means, hundreds of kilometres around his country to track down the relatives of his lost comrades. He has found 25 families so far, including that of Peter Mensah who left behind his wife and three children.

If Yahya Jammeh is to be tried, lawyers will have to win his extradition from Equatorial Guinea.</s>Officially, we’re supposed to call the country that Senegal surrounds The Gambia. Not Gambia, but The Gambia, just like we say, “I’m going to The Netherlands,” and not “I’m going to Netherlands.”

It’s such a conceit that a country insists that we always use “The” before mentioning their name as if there were five Gambias and a dozen Netherlands. “Oh, no, I’m not going to any old Gambia, I’m going to The Gambia.”

Many nations have “The” in their long-form name: The Republic of China, The Czech Republic, and The United States of America. However, when we’re not feeling overly stuffy and diplomatic, these countries give us a short-form name: “You are going to China, Czechia, and Gringoland.”

In this article, we’re not going to give into the conceit of The Gambia. From now on, it’s just Gambia.

Gambia’s long-time dictator, Yahya Jammeh, talked like Donald Trump’s long-lost twin. Jammeh claimed that he could cure AIDS, high blood pressure, infertility, and asthma with herbs. He lied when he said that “the first Atlantic flight and the first flight from Eastern Europe landed in Gambia.”

However, his funniest fabrication was when he asserted that Gambia “is one of the oldest and biggest countries in Africa that was reduced to a small snake by the British government who sold all our lands to the French.”

Jammeh wasn’t always unintentionally funny. During his regime, people disappeared, journalists were assassinated, students and migrants were killed. He conducted a witch-hunt after he became convinced that a witch had killed his aunt.

He was a bigamist Muslim who said, “If you don’t believe in God . . . you are even below a pig.”

He said that he “would cut off the head” of any homosexual found in Gambia and that “we will fight these vermin called homosexuals or gays the same way we are fighting malaria-causing mosquitoes, if not more aggressively.”

He added, “LGBT can only stand for Leprosy, Gonorrhea, Bacteria, and Tuberculosis, all of which are detrimental to human existence.”

In 2011, he told the BBC, “If I have to rule this country for one billion years, I will, if Allah says so.”

Five years later, it seems that Allah told him to end his 22-year dictatorship. Adama Barrow took over and reversed many of Jammeh’s worst decisions. Jammeh emptied the last $50 million in Gambia’s treasury on his way out and left the country saddled with $1 billion in debt (120% of GDP).

Barrow has a tough road ahead since his coffers are empty. However, he's improved things that don't cost money. For example, press freedom has increased dramatically. Reporters Without Borders moved the country up 22 spots in its 2018 World Press Freedom Index. Gambia is no longer a pariah .

In a country that is 90% Muslim, Gambians who are Christians feel safe, at least according to this priest:

One move that could spur a renaissance is if Senegal and Gambia united as much as possible to create Senegambia. Although a formal union like Zanzibar and Tanzania is extremely unlikely, a tighter union could help both countries, especially Gambia. Gambia could abandon its dalasi currency and adopt West Africa's CFA currency to facilitate trade . Equatorial Guinea and Guinea Bissau (two non-Francophone African countries) did just that in 1985 and 1997, respectively.

An even more radical idea is to teach French in schools. Most West African countries speak French. Gambians speak English well but they struggle to do business with the Francophones. Such ideas are terrible for the small-thinking, territorial Gambians who still rule over the broad-minded Gambians.

Albert Mendy, a Gambian in Banjul, theorized that Senegal’s relative wealth stems from not being as inward-focused as Gambia has been. He said, “Senegal was never fully independent because France kept helping them even after their independence. In Gambia, we became fully independent from the British who did little for us afterward. That’s why Senegal is far more developed than Gambia.”

When President Barrow was asked how he saw the future of Gambia, his answer was promising:

On my way out of Gambia, a customs official peeked in my truck’s backseat and pointed to something. I worried that he had spotted my professional camcorder and that he would invent some rule and force me to forfeit the camera. The customs official opened the backseat door. His eyes widened when he saw something fascinating: a dozen mangoes. I gave him one to encourage him to stop searching. He waved me through and then sat in the shade to enjoy the juicy fruit. Some African bribes are small.

Speaking about devouring fruits, some things haven't changed in Gambia:</s>A paramilitary death squad controlled by then-Gambian president Yahya Jammeh summarily executed more than 50 Ghanaian, Nigerian, and other West African migrants in July 2005, Human Rights Watch and TRIAL International said on Wednesday.Interviews with 30 former Gambian officials, including 11 officers directly involved in the incident, reveal that the migrants, who were bound for Europe but were suspected of being mercenaries intent on overthrowing Jammeh, were murdered after having been detained by Jammeh’s closest deputies in the army, navy, and police forces.

The witnesses identified the “Junglers,” a notorious unit that took its orders directly from Jammeh, as those who carried out the killings.

 “The West African migrants weren’t murdered by rogue elements, but by a paramilitary death squad taking orders from President Jammeh,” said Reedy Brody, counsel at Human Rights Watch.

“Jammeh’s subordinates then destroyed key evidence to prevent international investigators from learning the truth.”

Martin Kyere, the sole known Ghanaian survivor; the families of the disappeared; the family of Saul Ndow, another Ghanaian killed under Jammeh; and Ghanaian human rights organizations on May 16, 2018 called on the Ghanaian government to investigate the new evidence and potentially seek Jammeh’s extradition and prosecution in Ghana.

Jammeh’s 22-year rule was marked by widespread abuses, including forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and arbitrary detention. He sought exile in Equatorial Guinea in January 2017 after losing the December 2016 presidential election to Adama Barrow.</s>BANJUL, Gambia — A survivor, families of the disappeared and human rights organizations are seeking the extradition and prosecution in Ghana of Gambia’s former leader Yahya Jammeh for allegedly ordering the killing of more than 50 West African migrants in 2005.

Human Rights Watch and TRIAL International on Wednesday called on Ghana’s government to investigate new evidence tying Jammeh to the killings of Ghanaians and others.

The groups conducted interviews with 30 former Gambian officials, including 11 officers linked to the deaths. Witnesses identified the Junglers, a notorious unit that took orders directly from Jammeh, as those who carried out the killings.

The rights groups say the Gambian unit saw the migrants as suspected mercenaries.

Jammeh fled into exile in Equatorial Guinea in January 2017. His 22-year rule was marked by widespread abuses.</s>BANJUL, Gambia — A survivor, families of the disappeared and human rights organizations are seeking the extradition and prosecution in Ghana of Gambia's former leader Yahya Jammeh for alleged direct involvement in the killing of more than 50 West African migrants in 2005.

Human Rights Watch and TRIAL International on Wednesday called on Ghana's government to investigate new evidence they say ties Jammeh to the killings of Ghanaians and others.

The groups conducted interviews with 30 former Gambian officials, including 11 officers linked to the deaths. Witnesses identified the Junglers, a notorious unit that took orders directly from Jammeh, as those who carried out the killings as the migrants tried to make their way toward Europe.

Several officials told the rights groups that the migrants may have been mistaken for mercenaries, who reportedly were planning a coup.

"The West African migrants weren't murdered by rogue elements but by a paramilitary death squad taking orders from President Jammeh," said Reed Brody, counsel at Human Rights Watch. "Jammeh's subordinates then destroyed key evidence to prevent international investigators from learning the truth."

Some 44 Ghanaians and several Nigerians, including two women, left from neighbouring Senegal in a motorized canoe in hopes of catching a boat that eventually would take them to Europe, the rights groups said. They couldn't make contact with the boat and landed in Barra, Gambia, on July 22, which was the country's Revolution Day marking Jammeh's 1994 coup.

"They lined us up, pointing guns at us, and marched us to the Barra police," the sole known survivor of the killings, Martin Kyere, said in the report.

The rights groups confirmed that the migrants were detained in the presence of the inspector general of police, National Intelligence Agency director and chief of the defence staff, among others, and at least two of those present were in telephone contact with Jammeh.

The group of migrants was divided and handed over to the Junglers.

"We were in the back of a pickup truck," Kyere said. "As the truck went deeper into the forest I was able to get my hands free. I jumped out from the pickup and started to run into the forest."
A mass grave containing the bodies of 12 people is discovered in The Gambia. The victims were allegedly killed in 2005 by paramilitary forces controlled by former president Yahya Jammeh, according to human rights groups.