Former Daily Observer Editor reacts to bogus wanted list story

Dear Editor Sankareh,

I don't intend to ramble around but matter-of-factly, I wish to put on record that the said WANTED list is a scam and utterly bogus. I wish to state it clearly that, as you said of yourself, I don't need anyone to remind me that I'm WANTED by the criminal regime of Dictator Jammeh. We all know that this was a scrupulous attempt at getting some distractive elements in our struggle, asylum. But it's the unfair thing to do because that helps the dictator better cast his sarcastic vindications against us, and of course put our credibility to want.

Omar Bah, Ex-Daily Observer Editor, in exile in the USA 

I can repeat as you stated that there was no WANTED list. The said list already exists and does not in anyway include many in this latest scam. So for the sake of asylum, one should not distract the good work Gambians are doing against an illegal government, and I challenge editors to be cautious. People have their agendas. We have seen recently the kind of rebuttal The Gambia Echo’s Associate Editor, Mathew K. Jallow received for referring to some people as asylees. Yet most of those were indeed asylees. But because they wanted to safely visit home and be at peace with the dictator, or perhaps even land jobs with him, they attacked Mathew as if he was the criminal himself.

To further proof that this latest list was silly, why were the names of some of the most wanted people not there? Take journalist, Sulayman Makalo for instance. He published probably, the most 'embarrassing' article against the dictator during the AU summit, and there was an all-out search for him. God helped him to escape and he later joined me in camaraderie in Ghana, in hiding for about a year. Why was his name not there when everyone knows he is wanted? It's because the scammer forgot about his but remembers names of people who are themselves sure that they are not journalists in the first place. Another good example is M.L. Jaiteh, a very fine and harmless Gambian. He is languishing in exile in a second country. Why? Because a fellow Gambian who was enjoying the APRC luxury (and now on so-called asylum here in the US - we will expose them when the time comes) disclosed to the criminal Saja Taal that M.L. Jaiteh was the information supplier for the Media Foundation in The Gambia. We know how Saja alerted the NIA and how he luckily escaped. Yet he was not on the said WANTED list.

We know dozens of others in very serious situations who need not be reminded that they will die or be imprisoned forever when they are caught. So let the scammers give us a break. They should go ahead and seek asylum and not in anyway distract the good work going on.