Reveals Kissy Kissy Mansa, “Mr. Sankareh, it was here that the whole Ello Jallow melodrama  was staged as poor Gambian soldiers competed for the little crumbs that may have been trickling from Gambia’s prized First Lady who was on a spending spree like a drunken sailor and since Sgt. Ello Jallow was affable, smart and charismatic, he became increasing closer to a deeply disappointed woman, in need of a friend and confidant as she battled the devastating news of having to live with a co-wife amid widespread allegations that she was pompous and disdainful towards Gambians and Gambian culture."

Crucially still, according to a new whistle blower at the President’s office and identifying himself only as Officer Naff, “hell broke loose when Mrs. Jammeh confided in Sgt. Jallow that she was to buy furniture worth $1.4million and this really angered the rest of the security detail who became so visibly jealous of the charming young man.” Reveals Naff, for the rest of their US leg, Madam Jammeh spoke to Ello more frequently than most people and her near-fatal affection for the young officer was conspicuous which precipitated a combustible combination of rumours and innuendoes that the bodyguard was having extra-military affairs with his boss.

Asked if the duo were only confidants or if the urbane bodyguard  had transitioned to a Romeo, Naff says that would be subject to conjecture but as far as he knows, and conscious of Sgt. Jallow’s sense of professionalism, impeccable character, dedication to duty and discipline, that would have been totally out of character. Officer Naff however hastens to add, that the allegations were almost fever pitch that before Ello finally returned to The Gambia, numerous officers and friends had advised him not to risk returning home but he was persistent. Says Naff, he claimed total innocence and rubbished all such allegations as malicious lies orchestrated to tarnish his reputation. “To abscond,” Ello is quoted as having said, “could lend credence to such bizarre lies.”

Ello returns to Banjul with First Lady amid unrelenting speculations

Significantly, when Mrs. Jammeh finally returned home in the last weeks of December, 2010 accompanied by her security officers, little did she know that her friend, confidant and loyal protection officer, Sergeant Ello Jallow’s fate was sealed as President Yahya Jammeh acting on allegations of circumstantial evidence of her alleged romantic relation with this officer, had long sanctioned Ello’s demise in a fashion reminiscent of Pol Pot’s Cambodia- murder most brutal!

Bora Palangsoro Colley in dangling necktie, far left in front by aircraft as the dictator waves a copy of the Koran

 Thus on the second day of their return, Sgt. Jallow was disarmed and proceeded on a week’s leave. He resumed Monday and was told by both Major Amadou Joof and Brigadier General Serign Modou Njie that he was no longer under the Personal Protection office of the First Lady. They told him that on Tuesday he should report to the Banjul State Guards’ Training Wing, which involves the training of the Para-military officers. Curiously, when he reported there on Tuesday as instructed the previous day, he was again transferred to the Special Unit under Lieutenant Col. Bora Colley and was to receive his official transfer letter on Friday January7, 2011. After normal working hours on Wednesday as Ello was at the gym on routine physical exercise, he was instructed by his new boss, Lt. Col. Bora Colley, to meet him and some officers at 9:00pm for an emergency conclave in the woods by Sting Corner enroute to Bakau Cape Point.

Reveals Kissy Kissy Mansa, days leading to the tragic meeting, Ello had confided in the First Lady that there were some detractors out to destroy him but the woman allegedly admonished him not to mind them; that no matter where he may be transferred, whenever she travels, he will be the bodyguard and not even the President can stop her from that. Naff corroborates this incident and goes on to add that in fact, President Jammeh and Mrs. Jammeh had had a very nasty exchange about her choice of Sgt. Jallow. Reveals Naff, the Big Man (one of the tyrant’s numerous aliases) accused the First Lady that her affection for the young Sergeant Jallow was evidence of a sexual liaison, which the she flatly denied as total lies. “How can I have sex with my bodyguard?” she reportedly quizzed a very jealous Mr. Jammeh who ironically, has a notorious reputation of sleeping with some of his Cabinet Ministers, Directors, Permanent Secretaries, female officers, ground and clerical staff. “Yahya Jammeh is a genocidal liar, a libidinous sex maniac and ever since he toppled President Jawara, heaven knows how many female civil servants Jammeh had preyed on; some are spouses of his most loyal lieutenants but the man is sick” posits a very emotional Kissy Kissy Mansa. At one point, recalls Kissy, President Jammeh’s sexual sickness was so uncontrollable that he ordered prostitutes from Guinea Bissau and the late NIA officer, Munirou Darboe was the pimp. According to Kissy Kissy Mansa, the presidential brothel that housed over twenty Guinean prostitutes was designated to Major Bajinka but the erstwhile Major never lived there and was probably clueless that a house assigned to him was converted to a presidential slaughter house. Instead, President Jammeh and Edward Singhateh routinely met at this location belonging to a Sarahule businessman by St. Mary’s Food and Wine, wining and womanizing with Mulatto prostitutes from Guinea Bissau. “What if we also begin to reveal names of all those married women Jammeh preys on?” We’ll see!

Sting Corner, Gambian Myth and the Meeting that Never Was

Ever since news of this shameful automobile fatality broke, wild rumours and allegations of myth and supernatural interventions continue to poison the air and almost a month after Sgt. Ello Jallow’s remains were laid to rest at his native Malikunda, the gods of Bakau Katchikali and Sting Corner remain robustly restless. While both places remain sacred spots in Gambian mythology, the young officer’s death seems to have rekindled whatever vestiges of the supernatural powers (real or imagined) that remain within.  

Lest we forget, it was here (Sting Corner) that on January 15, 2000, Lieutenant Almamo Manneh’s disfigured body was found riddled with bullets following allegations that he resisted arrest when news of his alleged coup attempt was leaked to the state. Yet, after the dust settled, it became clear that Lt. Manneh was actually summoned to an emergency meeting, brutally butchered at State House and then, his decimated body ferried in a military jeep to make the scene look credible as if he were involved in a gun battled with loyal officers at Sting Corner.

Like Lieutenant Manneh in 2000, Sgt. Ello Jallow was also invited to a meeting and consistent with his sense of professionalism, he quickly jumped behind the wheel of his Suzuki Vitera, license plate No. WD 3188A and drove at breakneck speed to meet his superiors. As if by divine intervention, reports Officer Naff, as Ello approached Denton Bridge, he realized that the SUV was almost out of fuel and so he pulled over and sent some junior officers who ran helter-skelter and got him gas worth D2000 Gambian currency at a local petrol station few meters from the bridge.

Sgt. Jallow's Jeep, Plate No. WD 3188A

Reveals our military intelligence operative, as Sgt. Jallow was anxiously awaiting his petrol, Lt. Col. Bora Colley was loosing it, yelling at the top of his voice, that he needed to hurry up as the meeting was long over due. Ello, who apparently smelled the rat, reportedly activated his mobile phone speakers so the officers on duty at the Denton Bridge Police Station could hear Mr. Colley’s ranting voice reverberate like a beast poised to devour on its prey. Numerous times, Ello would also deliberately fire back, “yes, sir, Colonel Bora Colley sir, am on the way sir.”  Sgt. Jallow finally refueled and headed to his scheduled meeting at about 9:30pm local Gambian time but as he hurriedly drove to the meeting, he called numerous friends, comrades and confidants alerting them to his trepidation regarding the meeting with Colonel Colley whose brutal barbarity, as head of the Special Unit—Gambia’s notorious hit squad; is common knowledge within the military establishment. As a precautionary measure, Sgt. Jallow even called First Lady Zeineb and confided in her of the night meeting, she in turn called President Jammeh to seek clarification while he was with the newly wed wife but Alhagi Yahya Jammeh allegedly, declined to take the phone call. In the end, Zeineb is alleged to have talked him into attending the meeting assuring him that nothing sinister was going to happen and so he left.

Reveals Officer Naff, as Sgt. Ello Jallow pulled over the sandbars by the Cape Point culvert on the right hand corner of the road from Banjul, he found Col. Bora Colley, Sheriffo Kujabi, Ebrima Jarjue (a.k.a Rambo), Staff Sgt. John K. Mendy and an officer identified only by his alias, Jah, ready for the grand meeting in which, he was to be briefed on the role of the Special Unit, which almost always operates at midnight and usually in hooded outfits befitting desperadoes. According to Naff, even as the meeting was progressing, Ello was able to relay messages that he was in the midst of his superiors and within minutes, his phone was dead.

Cape Point Culvert-Alleged Murder Scene

According to highly placed sources nestled within the corridors of state power, among them our most trusted Kissy Kissy Mansa and Waato Seeta, minutes after the meeting began in the sandbars by the mangroves overlooking the Atlantic, than one of the soldiers popped a canister and sprayed Sgt. Jallow’s face with chemicals and a melee ensued. As the five officers struggled to subdue Ello, he allegedly injured two of them—Rambo and Jah but in the end, they wrestled him to the ground and broke his cervical vertebrae-neck bones.

Once they confirmed Ello dead, our sources alleged, they ripped him off his precious belongings- a Swiss wrist watch valued at £700 UK, new jean pants, brand new Adidas tennis sneakers, digital camera, mobile phone memory card and up to about D20,000.00 (twenty thousand Gambian Dalasis). Sgt. Jallow’s Suzuki Vitera jeep was then hammered in the front upper roof to make it look like Jallow was involved in a fatal car crash by Sting Corner and since the generality of Gambians believe in supernatural powers, witchcraft, jinns and their demonic prowess, the culvert by Sting Corner was the most appropriate sacred spot to sell such a shameless story of cool blood murder of a young Gambian soldier in the prime of his life. Once the car was dented, Ello’s remains were placed in the front passenger seat and the ill-fated vehicle driven up to the Cape Point culvert that the Jammeh government has been consistently calling a bridge- a pathetic misnomer for a murder scene location. As far as we know, there is only one bridge between Bakau and Banjul and that is the Denton Bridge and for clarity, we dispatched our intrepid reporters to capture the scene for the causal reader not aufait with Gambian geography to appreciate our narrative.

Significantly, those of us familiar with this terrain, during this time of the year (dry season), the place is often dry that little children could be seen playing around, local women are seen hauling small fish for dietary supplements and not even a rat can drown in this culvert as the State House story seems to suggest. In fact, Ello’s car that reportedly plugged into the river does not even bear signs consistent with the state’s theory of an automobile accident. If he were the driver to the vehicle and he was, how come he was found stripped naked in the front passenger seat and not the driver’s seat?  Above all, how come a dead soldier was stripped naked and his belongings stolen?

In a twist of bizarre proportions, within 48-hours after Ello Jallow was callously hacked to death by his own colleagues, soldiers stormed his Battery flat room, an arm’s length from State House and looted whatever they could grab. Members of the National Intelligence Agency also allegedly ransacked his room collecting whatever vital information they were looking for.   

Lamentably, Ello’s tragic end has striking similarities with numerous other foul murders sanctioned by President Jammeh and one that bears chilling reminiscences of this incident is the brutal execution of Daba Marenah and four others in the wake of the foiled March 23, 2006 coup, allegedly led by erstwhile army chief, Colonel Ndure Cham. In that case, Daba and co. reportedly fled an accident scene during a prisoner transfer and in a country where prisoners are bound together in manacles and handcuffs how could those prisoners have escaped in shackles? Any person who still believes that Daba Marenah and his colleagues fled that doctored  accident scene, may as well report to the nearest psychiatric unit for mental evaluation because something must be seminal wrong with their state of mind.

Police raise eyebrows as Ello’s distraught family declines Medical report?

Unimpeachable and highly placed police sources tell The Gambia Echo that any police officer who believes in the accident story must be an idiot because there were no visible accident marks on both the vehicle and the scene where the fatality allegedly occurred. According to a senior officer who begged strictest confidentiality, “our men who visited the murder scene around 3:00am were perplexed and speechless because the tragic figure had no marks consistent with vehicular accident, the front windshield was intact, the front head lights were also intact as well as all the signal lights and the front fender or bumper.”

 According to another intelligence officer, there was no blood, no urine or body fluids in both seats and how Sgt. Jallow could have died at the culvert as alleged by State House, remains the biggest mystery in police investigations.

Acting on this tip, we contacted our sources at the Royal Victoria Teaching Hospital who confirmed that Sgt. Ello Jallow’s dead body was received at the facility and was at the morgue from the early hours of Thursday morning January 6, 2011 until about 11:00am when his remains were collected by state security agents for burial at his native Malikunda. Quizzed as to whether there was any postmortem, a top hospital source tells this reporter that the family had first requested for a postmortem examination but later changed their plan as allegations of retribution from the Big Man began to circulate in town like wild fire. Asked if based on experience they could establish the cause of death, our source reveals that normally, that is the role of a pathologist but based on numerous years of medical practice, the young man we saw did not die in a car accident. What do you think killed Ello Jallow we pressed further and our source only said “my brother, this is a very sad story and how Gambian citizens could do such things is beyond my imagination and very, very scary.”

Ello’s remains collected from RVH as Zeineb threatens suicide

According to Officer Naff, First Lady Zeineb Jammeh was devastated hours after Ello’s remains were taken from the Royal Victoria Hospital. She was clueless that her most loyal guard and friend was murdered in the meeting that never was, his dead body taken to a near by ravine and then transferred to the RVH only to be hurriedly taken away lest her husband liquidates the rest of Ello’s distraught family. President Jammeh told the guards to keep her in the dark until after the burial because he does not want her to visit the corpse at the mortuary.

According to Kissy Kissy Mansa, Jammeh then sent Brigadier General Serign Modou Njie to the bereaved family alleging that the First Lady refuses to eat, was not talking to anybody and had in fact, threatened to commit suicide, that he would like for them to pacify her on the tragic and unfortunate death of such a loyal officer. Thus on Monday January 10, 2011, Ello’s mother, Aja Gina Jallow, accompanied by a handful of Niamina elders, converged on the State House grounds where they met Lt. Colonel Ansumana Tamba and members of the Mosque Committee. Col. Tamba and colleagues expressed their heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family and handed them D70, 000.00 being President Jammeh’s symbolic gesture towards the bereaved family. For us at The Gambia Echo, this gesture is probably the most audacious hypocritical pronunciation since the inception of religion. However, for those who have been following Jammeh’s regime for the past 16-years, the brutal murder of Finance Minister, Ousman Koro Ceesay, readily comes to mind as there too, President Jammeh exhibited the same hypocritical tendencies that have become all too familiar.

As we went press, this reporter had tried relentlessly to speak to Ello’s siblings Messrs. Pateh Jallow, former Deputy Director General of The National Drug Enforcement Agency (NDEA), Amadou Jallow and Buruma Jallow but they all flatly declined to speak. The Gambia Echo has reliably learnt that in fact, Pateh Jallow has all his travel documents seized by the most predacious NIA and it remains to be seen where he too will end with Yahya Jammeh and his team of bandits. The Jallow family is really devastated and we extend our profound sense of grieve during this very difficult time.

          Sergeant Ello Jallow-A Postscript

Ello Jallow was born in 1978 in Malikunda village, Niamina West District, Central River Division. After completing his village primary school, Jallow proceeded to Tahir Ahmadiyya High School in Mansakonko where he graduated in June 2001. He enlisted in The Gambia National Army in April, 2002 and after his basic recruit training was posted to State House in late 2002. Ello is the son of the legendary Mamah Tama Jallow of blessed memory and Aja Gina Jallow and is survived by five brothers and a fiancée, the affable Lady Jan Jallow, a knighted British police officer who lives in Kololi village, The Gambia.

Although a non-commissioned offer, young Sgt. Jallow rose to prominence due largely to his superb skills in Explosive Ordinance (EOD) during training with a contingent of Iranian military experts at Kanilai village, The Gambia.

In fact, shortly after his tragic demise, speculations were rife within Banjul that his proximity to the Iranians who have since been expelled by the Jammeh government may have had an effect in further denting his relation with the dictator. Be that as it were, we at The Gambia Echo are convinced beyond a shadow of doubt that Sgt. Ello Jallow like numerous others before him was also killed by Yahya Jammeh and until the day, Jammeh leaves State House, these gruesome murders will never cease to exist in The Gambia.