Interior Minister Sonko & IGP Badjie Helped Abdoulie Kujabie Escape

-Echo Exclusive

By EBRIMA G. SANKAREH Editor-In-Chief

Unimpeachable sources from the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) report that Gambia’s Interior Minister, Ousman Sonko and Inspector General of Police; -IGP Essa Badjie (a.k.a Jesus) facilitated the fleeing from justice of Abdoulie Kujabie former NIA Director General. Reveals our NIA insider, Kungkiling Tamala, “Sonko and Badjie even provided Kujabie the pocket money and transport that helped him elude the authorities in the case involving the stealing and selling of a vehicle by the late police Inspector, Manlafi Sanyang.

 Minister Sonko, Fugitive Abdoulie Kujabie & IGP Essa Badjie

Read More..

Barack Obama Addresses The Democratic Convention

To Chairman Dean and my great friend Dick Durbin; and to all my fellow citizens of this great nation; With profound gratitude and great humility, I accept your nomination for the presidency of the United States. Let me express my thanks to the historic slate of candidates who accompanied me on this journey, and especially the one who travelled the farthest - a champion for working Americans and an inspiration to my daughters and to yours -- Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Read More..

Commentary

Ghana-Election as Regional Democratic Test

By Kofi Akosah-Sarpong

The impending Ghana December 2008 is test for the West African region as it struggles for democratic consolidation. Seen as the sub-region’s democracy star, the Ghana December election is a trial for a region which stability is still suspect as last month’s military coup in Mauritania and the coup attempt in Guinea Bissau reveal. Despite the fully-steamed democratic activities in Ghana, the latest United Nations assessments of the health of Sierra Leone and Liberia stabilities say democracy is shaky not only in these two countries but in a sub-region that is hungry for democracy and stability for progress.

Read More..

Awakening the Sleeping Ghana via its Elites

By Kofi Akosah-Sarpong**

Maxwell Owusu, a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, thinks Ghana is asleep as a development project. The issue borders on how Ghanaian elites understand their nation-state to the extent of how they exploit such understanding to the global prosperity level for progress. For Owusu, as the Accra-based Public Agenda reports, Ghana’s near-development-coma has been going on “for the best part of her history.”

Read More..

Sir Dawda Jawara Attends Senator Barack Obama’s Presidential Nomination

By EBRIMA G. SANKAREH, Editor-In-Chief

As a fitting tribute to his tolerance, peaceful persona, adherence to the doctrine of the Rule of Law and democratic legacy, The Gambia’s premier President, Alhagie Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara is among several hundreds of world dignitaries to attend the historic nomination of Senator Barack Hussein Obama’s candidature as the Democratic Party’s presidential contender.

Sir Dawda seen here,1984 with the late Pakistani President Haq

Read More..

And so We Live and Die

By Mathew K. Jallow, Associate Editor

No sounds, no echoes; only an eerie deadly silence

Permeating the stillness of the dark mysterious night

Betraying dreadful mysteries of the dungeon of death

And as Mile 2 looms, still no one dares think or ask

Manlafi’s restless soul hovers in the empty blue void above Brikama-Ba has finally given a son to eternal darkness

In the melancholic world of the dead his soul goes to rest

Read More..

The Verdict: An Indictment of a Perfidious Justice System

Read More..

A Pro-Gov’t. Court Banks Yahya Jammeh US$12,000

BY TIJAN NIMAGA, New York Bureau Chief

It has always been said that “justice delayed is justice denied” and nothing can be further from the inherent truth in that profound statement. Since the libel trial against Fatou Jaw Manneh, a U S based Gambian journalist began a year ago; almost everyone in The Gambia knew that the verdict in her case would never be fair. The verdict on Fatou’s case has provoked the most basic tenets of our Constitutional foundations and threatens our way of life especially, us journalists. 

Read More..

Press Releases on Fatou Jaw Manneh’s Conviction

 STGDP PRESS RELEASE

The unjust conviction of Fatou Jaw Manneh today by Magistrate Buba Jawo is seen by the STGDP as a conviction against all Gambians in the Diaspora and a total disregard for the constitution and the rule of law. The very magistrate that said he did not have the jurisdiction to hear the case barefacedly buckled under pressure and called the case for the state. This verdict demonstrates the total erosion of democracy and the rule of law in the Gambia.

Read More..

News Just In: Magistrate Jawo Convicts Journalist F.J.Manneh to 4 Years

Predictably, after one and a half-year of a protracted legal saga over jurisdiction, today Magistrate Buba Jawo shamelessly rendered gross injustice by convicting US based Gambian journalist Fatou Jaw Manneh. As our correspondents work out the legal details of the conviction, it is understood that she had the option of paying a $12,000 fine.

Read More..

Breaking News: United Nations & ECOWAS Investigate Deaths of Ghanaians in The Gambia

By EBRIMA G. SANKAREH Editor-In-Chief

It all began in July 2005 when the autocratic regime of President Yahya Jammeh allegedly acting on a fake intelligence report that a team of well-armed West African mercenaries was destined to it shores to seize power and restore democracy and the rule of law, that it rounded up several dozens African immigrants in the Senegalese border post of Amdalaye and in brake neck speed, drove to Barra village in The Gambia’s North Bank Division, 7 sea miles off the capital, Banjul.

Ambassador Curtis Ward in charge

Read More..

Sheikh Hassan Cisse:A Rara Avis Scholar Dies at 63 

By Ebrima G. Sankareh, Editor In-Chief

The Gambia Echo Newspaper joins the millions of Muslims and non-Muslims who mourn the sudden death of Senegalese born multi-lingual Islamic scholar, Imam Sheikh Hassan Cisse; a tireless and erudite educator, a charismatic and affable communicator, a humble humanist and phenomenal philanthropist who passed away Wednesday.

Read More..

It is Official: Gambians have become Yahya Jammeh’s Slaves

By MATHEW K. JALLOW, Associate Editor

Hundreds of volunteers descended on Kanilai in response to Yahya Jammeh’s call for help on his farm, cried The Daily Observer Monday August 11^th. 2008 headline. That so many did so after The Daily Observer editorials hit the stands last week was not unexpected, what was surprising was that the bulk of these respondents are career civil servants who include some of our top bureaucrats.

Read More..

DISCLAIMER

By Ebrima G. Sankareh, Editor-In-Chief

A Gambian resident in the United States has on June 27, 2008 sent a fax message to the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration Department (UDI), Asylum Department claiming that The Gambia Echo’s Editor-In Chief, Ebrima G. Sankareh purportedly wrote it. In the letter, the impersonator claimed that a Gambian currently seeking political asylum was Editor Sankareh’s brother and was seeking asylum after he was accused of sourcing our stories.

Read More..

Jammeh- Hero

Or Human Butcher? July 22, 1994 Coup- What Did We Learn?

By NYANCHO, Stockholm Sweden

For the past fourteen years, The Gambia, a once prosperous and democratically promising entity within the annual Human Quality Index’s projections, with human and intellectual resources to propel the tiny Republic into a bastion of fruitful and contributive power in the sub region, suddenly collapsed registering and lengthening the sequence of so-called failed states in contemporary history of the post colonial, and perhaps the last monarchial type of state under the pretext of African democracy.

KEBBA SANNEH, NYANCHO

Read More..

In Memory Of Comrade Adama Faburay

1950 – 2008

Comrade Adama Faburay was a breccia of goodness and generosity throughout his life; personal qualities that remained inviolable despite the aggressive

cancer that snatched him away on Thursday July 24. Like a huge hole sliced in the sky, Comrade Adama’s transition precipitated a gaping emptiness, a landscape without geography; an emptiness that gulps our collective sorrow and evokes a miserable and incessant brooding about life, about death, about the mission to liberate and about the struggle that will outlast us all, his mourning comrades.

Read More..

Press Statement

MFWA’s Lawyers issue Ultimatum to ECOWAS Commission Over Detained Gambian Journalist

Solicitors of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) have given the President of the ECOWAS Commission a fifteen-day ultimatum to compel the government of President Yahya Jammeh of the Gambia to comply with the order of the Community Court and release detained journalist Chief Ebrima Manneh.

Read More..

Colonel Ndure Cham Granted Refuge In Germany

By EBRIMA G. SANKAREH, Editor-In-Chief

Unimpeachable sources nestled within the corridors of state power in Banjul say erstwhile Gambian Army Chief of Defense Staff, Colonel Ndure Cham, the alleged mastermind of the abortive March 21, 2006 coup in the West African State, has been granted refugee status in Germany. According to our unassailable sources, the high profile military officer may have transitioned to Germany early July following numerous attempts by the Jammeh government to have Senegal's Octogenarian Head of state Abdoulaye Wade extradite him.

Read More..

President Jammeh Orders Immediate Dissolution of Gambia’s Islamic Council Executive

By Njie Khakatarr, State House

Unassailable reports at State House reveal that Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh has ordered the immediate dissolution of the Supreme Islamic Council Executive. At an emergency meeting summoned at State House on Tuesday August 5, 2008 and attended by the current leadership of the Council, the Secretary of State for Local Government, Lands and Religious

Read More..

Observer’s Editorials from Fantasyland

 By Mathew K. Jallow, Associate Editor

As I recuperate from a surgery for an ailment that back home could have easily sent me to the early graveyard, I began to ponder what I might have missed in the home news. My condition, I can assure our readership, had nothing to do with that world-renowned buffoon, Yahya Jammeh’s claim to recently acquired “supernatural black magic” powers. If in due course I feel that there is a compelling public interest and a need to know on the ground of health education, I will write a full account of my experiences and ordeal of my surgery.

Mathew K. Jallow, Associate Editor 

Read More..

Adventures in The Gambia, A Marconi Engineer Retells Pre-1981 Coup Tale

By CLIVE WARNER, Monterrey Mexico

I arrived in The Gambia in 1980, probably in November, because the weather was sunny and dry, and it was before Christmas. (I’d have to dig up an old passport to be certain.) We checked in to a hotel on the strip, the African Village. I was delighted by my room, which looked out over the Atlantic with the beach directly below. It seemed to us that we were living in an idyll, but getting paid for it at the same time.

Radio Gambia engineers @ Bonto station, 1980-81

Read More..

A Quadrilogy of President

BY TIJAN NIMAGA, Bronx, New York

In 1980, independent African countries watched and listened to Robert Mugabe with fascination, wonderment, joy and patriotism as he delivered his first presidential speech on the BBC. During the colonial days, Zimbabwe, formerly Southern Rhodesia was ruled by a predominantly white aristocratic government, which brought more wealth to the early white settlers than the ordinary Zimbabweans relegated as NATIVES.

Read More..

Powerful US Senator, Durbin, Blasts Gambia’s Human Rights

In what could be characterized as a welcome, albeit belated development, one of the most powerful voices in the United States Senate, Illinois’ Senior Senator Richard (Dick) J. Durbin has blasted Gambian president Yahya Jammeh’s dictatorial regime for its for blatant abuse of civil and human rights. In remarks in the United States Senate floor, the Deputy Senate Whip and Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee disclosed to his Senate colleagues the authoritarian nature of Gambian Head of State Yahya Jammeh’s government.

Senator Dick Durbin, US Senate

Read More..