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. 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. “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.”

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. 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. 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. “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. 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’. 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. 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. ”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.” 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.
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.