According to our State House operative Kissy Kissy Mansa and Banjul Bureau Chief Njie Khakatarr, Dr. Alieu Badara Sarja Taal, Managing Director of the Gambian Daily Observer was subjected to a grueling questioning by the all too powerful National Intelligence Agency (NIA) over the weekend. Says Khakatarr, the NIA held Sarja for at least 12 hours and when he was released, he was sweating all over. He has since asked his staff to pray for him, as God alone knows how he could have been entangled in this messy web of investigations. “How can S.B.S Taal be complicit in a plot to undermine the very government that he supports?” Dr. Taal is quoted as repeatedly asking.     

            Predictably, Mam Sait and Malick Jones have taken their first doze of torture and have begun talking and Taal’s questioning over the weekend centered on a text message the NIA retrieved from Mam Sait Ceesay’s mobile phone. According to Njie Khakatarr, the text was in a coded question apparently sent to Dr. Taal from Sait soliciting information, which the NIA believes was destined to a potential foreign newspaper informer vaguely identified only as L. Jallow.

            Reveals Khakatarr, the NIA had also quizzed Taal on why he would not use his personal vehicle to go to Kanilai but on the habit of hiring a taxi driver at a cost of D2000.00 a day only to get news from Modou Sanyang who is now stationed there. According to Kissy Kissy Mansa, the NIA strongly believes that Sarja Taal was spending all these large sums of money for higher dividends that only overseas news outlets could afford and that Jones and Ceesay may have allegedly been the conduits for this racket to go on. According to Kissy the NIA were very mad at Dr. Taal for his use of technical register, which they thought, was meant to deflect their attention from the text message. To the contrary says Kissy, Sarja consistently told his interrogators that “a question mark is a question mark and only Mam Sait could explain why he would send question marks in his text messages”. Grilled further by the NIA to the effect that a newspaper commentator had alluded to a trip to Kanilai and if he Taal was the commentator he reportedly told the NIA that, he does not write for any paper other than The Daily Observer for the realization of His Excellency Dr. Yahya A. J.J. Jammeh’s dream of a better Gambia.”  The NIA also reportedly gave Sarja a list of phrases and words and ask him to use them in a bid to see consistency with the allegedly libelous commentary culled from an undisclosed foreign newspaper. Taal was finally let go with the understanding that he may be recalled any time as they deem fit.   

            Meanwhile, Mam Sait Ceesay and Malick Jones return to court tomorrow Wednesday before Magistrate B.Y.Camara.