By Ebrima G. Sankareh, Editor-In-Chief

The Paris–based press freedom watchdog, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has added its voice to the mounting pressure on President Yahya Jammeh’s authoritarian regime over its recalcitrance in the case of missing Gambian journalist Chief Ebrima Manneh. In a letter addressed to Dr. Mohammed Ibn Chambers of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), RSF urges him to intercede on behalf journalist, Chief Ebrima Manneh who went missing since July, 2006 following an arrest by the country’s most feared National Intelligence Agency.

In June 2008 the Abuja headquartered ECOWAS Community Court of Justice found the Jammeh government complicitious and ordered it to release Manneh and compensate him $100,000.00. Instead of compiling with the Court’s order, Jammeh and his cronies, Neneh Macdouall Gaye and Marie Saine Firdaus went on the offensive lying to their teeth that Manneh was never in the custody of the dictatorship. Only yesterday, The Gambia Echo published a strongly worded letter written by six powerful United States Senators expressing unprecedented outrage over the Manneh saga and the shameful silence of the Jammeh Government. Below is the letter addressed to Dr. Chambers:

(http://www.rsf.org)

Regional group asked to intercede on behalf of missing journalist

Reporters Without Borders has written to Dr. Mohamed Ibn Chambas, the president of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), asking him to intercede with the Gambian authorities on behalf of a journalist, “Chief” Ebrima Manneh, who has been missing since his arrest in Banjul in July 2006.

Last year, an ECOWAS court ordered the Gambian government to free Manneh and pay him compensation, but the government continued to deny holding him.

“We urge you to reiterate your appeal to the Gambian authorities, who are required to cooperate with the court by articles 3 and 4 of the ECOWAS founding treaty,” Reporters Without Borders said in its 22 April letter. “Our organisation hopes that your personal involvement will convince the Gambian authorities to finally agree to shed light on Manneh’s fate.”

Gambian justice minister Marie Saine Firdaus denied on 6 April that Manneh, a journalist with the privately owned Daily Observer, had ever been detained in a Gambian prison. But, speaking on condition of anonymity, a police officer employed at Banjul’s Mile Two prison told Agence France-Presse a week later that he last saw Manneh in the prison in 2008, before he was taken away one night by a plain-clothes police officer.

There are no reports of Manneh being seen since then and the Mile Two police officer believes he is now dead.

In a ruling issued on 5 June 2008, the ECOWAS Court of Justice, which is based in the Nigerian city of Abuja, formally ordered President Yahya Jammeh’s government to release Manneh and pay him 100,000 dollars in damages, but the government refused to cooperate.

Manneh has been missing ever since his arrest by members of the National Intelligence Agency on 7 July 2006, a few days after an African Union summit in Banjul. The reason for his arrest never came to light and the Gambian government has always refused to provide any information about what has happened to him.

Several credible sources said he was being held in a provincial police station in January 2007 and then in Banjul’s Mile Two prison in July 2007, before being transferred to a hospital.