Breaking News: Missing NIA Officer, Kebba Secka Spotted At Mile II
By EBRIMA G. SANKAREH, Editor-In-Chief
One year after his mysterious disappearance followed by a combustible combination of speculations and differing tales of conspiracy theories as to his fate, today, we report with unassailable evidence that Mr. Kebba Secka is currently detained at Banjul’s infamous Mile II Prisons.
“Like most security detainees in The Gambia, Secka is severely malnourished, emotionally detached and overwhelmingly emaciated,” reveals our highly placed source at the National Intelligence Agency, the very institution Secka worked for until one fateful day in 2007 when he was invited to its ill-fated Headquarters on Marena Parade and never to be seen again. According to our source, Secka had “Churah” (porridge) for dinner this past Friday. “Mr. Sankareh, I saw the boy eating the Churah but there was no sour milk, just bare white rice and, I really felt bad seeing an innocent person detained for a year without charges or bail” says our correspondent who saw Secka. “Apart from the poor prisoner diets, Mile II has an offensive odor, coupled with the flies and the mosquitoes and you cannot control your tears when you see good people scratching their bodies in a war with mosquitoes” reveals our reporter.
Secka, 33, is a native of Albreda in The Gambia’s North Bank and enlisted with the NIA soon after completing school around 1997. Before his arrest, he was posted to Giboro in the Western Region where according to our highly placed source, he was assigned to penetrate the various rebel factions in Cassamance, a job he reportedly did so well until one day, when a letter writer with damning allegations turned his life upside down and inside out. Says our NIA source, the letter writer who may have had some personal problems with the young agent, had alleged that the Jakai rebel group, the faction that supports the Dakar government against the MFDC, had convinced Kebba Secka to procure them AK-47 riffles and several other sophisticated military paraphernalia from The Gambia. Reveals our source, no sooner had the letter reached headquarters, than Secka was summoned to a meeting. Once at the NIA, Secka was arrested and subjected to an intense and degrading interrogation with allegations that he was an agent for Abdoulaye Wade, Senegal’s octogenarian Head of State. According to another source, Secka flatly denied the allegations and that is what really angered the authorities. They wanted him to confess about the allegation to procure weapons for the combatants and then apologize, but that too could have been suicidal our source said. Since then, Secka has been at Mile Two Prisons while his family members have been criss-crossing the country in a wild goose chase, looking for their love one. Many had concluded that like so many Gambian detainees Secka was dead. Some government officials even lied that he may have been abducted by Cassamance rebels when they knew damn well, that he was under their custody.
In a country where the president brags about sending citizens to jail for their entire life, it remains to be seen what Kebba Secka’s fate will be. What we do know is that Secka is alive and in prison suit at Mile II Prisons and hopefully, this information may be a sigh of relief for his wife and family.