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.Cham who fled to neighboring Senegal in March 2006 leaving behind a state of pandemonium was accused of attempting to overthrow the autocratic regime of President Yahya Jammeh who was visiting Mauritania with a high powered delegation among it, Daba Marena, erstwhile Director General of the notorious and all-too powerful National Intelligence Agency (NIA).

However, by a cruel twist of irony, Marena was arrested five days (early Sunday morning) later and in a dubious prisoner transfer, was alleged to have escaped with four other security detainees following a mysterious car wreck. That was later proven to be a classic tale of fiction because Marena and the others were in actuality, all rounded up and summarily executed by President Yahya Jammeh’s hit squad. The ferocity with which Marena and colleagues were executed says our State House operative Kissy Kissy Mansa, has chilling imitations of terrorist executions in war torn Iraq. “In sum” says Kissy, “they were tortured and then butchered.”

What follows was massive arrest of human rights lawyers, parliamentarians, students, politicians and security personnel most of whom were detained incommunicado and others still tortured in a fashion reminiscent of barbarians. The regime’s own National Assembly Members who shamelessly allowed the dictator to twist their hands and decree the most draconian laws in our history, were not spared. In particular, Hon. Demba Dem was arrested, detained incommunicado and severely tortured before he was tried and acquitted by the Courts. Before Dem’s trial, many had predicted that he was going to die in the hands of his jailers who routinely tortured him with electric shocks to his genitalia, a very common torture method by NIA agents. According to our sources, most Gambian male detainees who leave Mile Two Prisons these days have lost their potency. In fact, one former prisoner who went for overseas treatment could not return home because his doctors have done everything but could not restore his potency. Small boys played with his manhood like a toy until all muscles were weakened. The embarrassment and the societal ramifications that surround impotency in Gambia are so complex that this fine fellow has decided to leave his wives for good. Says Kissy Kissy Mansa, “there are so many Gambians who lost their potency during their detention at Mile II; at least I know of five who are trying European hospitals for treatment.”  

All military detainees were tortured and had their forced confession repeatedly broadcast on Gambia’s National Radio and Television (GRTS). In the end, they were tried before a tribunal headed by wanting Nigerian jurists or should I say jesters posing as judges? A pathetic clique of gold diggers who were more interested in lining their pockets with Yahya Jammeh’s ill-gotten dollars than the judicious dispensation of justice. The kangaroo trials that followed the alleged coup were a withering indictment of Yahya Jammeh’s government and if anything, a powerful punctuation of the long held belief that he is an utterly despicable dictator who acts as judge and jury in most court cases in the mini-state. Predictably, in the end, almost all security personnel, majority of whom had dined, wined and womanized with him during his days as a miserable gendarmerie officer, were sentenced to life and or long sentences and today, as you read these lines, all those young men are vegetating behind the harrowing walls of The Gambia’s Gulag Archipelago (Mile II) to paraphrase Russia’s literary icon, the late Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

In the months that followed Ndure Cham’s fleeing to Senegal, followed a little later by the narrow escape on July 22, 2006 of Major Kalifa Bajinka, the longest serving presidential aide allegedly linked to the coup debacle, Yahya Jammeh’s paranoia seemed to have metastasized. With Colonel Ndure Cham, Major Kalifa Bajinka and Captain Sana Sabally- Jammeh’s former Vice Chairman and a key player in the July 22, 1994 coup that catapulted him to the pinnacle of power, all in Senegal, The Gambia government went on a media offensive accusing Senegal of plotting to use these high profile dissidents to topple the Banjul regime. The Daily Observer Newspaper, GRTVS as well as the National Assembly pedaled the gossip that our neighbours were plotting with the dissident trio to remove Jammeh from power. What many Gambians did not probably know and will be shock to learn today, is that President Yahya Jammeh himself wrote the story alleging Senegal’s attempt to overthrow his government and then sent it to Daily Observer. We challenge Yahya Jammeh the God fearing Muslim (supposedly) to lay his hands on the Holy Quran and deny this allegation that he was the author of the Observer lead story during the controversy!!!! Infact, the following morning, a team of NIA and police officers frantically visited the Observer offices threatening to arrest Saja Taal and staff for publishing such a letter that could bring war between the two countries, but when they were told that President Yahya Jammeh himself wrote the article they ran helter shelter apologizing to the journalists. Says our State House operative, “the article was hand written by Yahya Jammeh then given to a messenger to deliver to Dr. Taal requesting that it be featured prominently on the paper. Soon after the letter reached The Observer offices reveals our State House operative, Yahya Jammeh called and after it was confirmed that the letter was with the editors, he used profanities threatening to among other things …President Abdoulaye Wade’s mom.