Activists Hope Momentum Is Building to Put Gambia’s Former Dictator on Trial

Activists Hope Momentum Is Building to Put Gambia’s Former Dictator on Trial
Former Gambian President Yahya Jammeh during an African Union summit meeting, Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, June 30, 2011 (AP photo by Rebecca Blackwell).

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent.

It has been less than two years since Yahya Jammeh, the longtime dictator of Gambia, stepped down and fled into exile in Equatorial Guinea after losing the presidential election to Adama Barrow. But as the process of national reconciliation plays out on Gambian soil, human rights groups are already making moves to have Jammeh put on trial abroad.

On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch and TRIAL International published a report they say links a notorious Jammeh-era paramilitary unit known as the “Junglers” to the executions of more than 50 West African migrants, the majority of them Ghanaian. The killings occurred in 2005, after the migrants, who were trying to connect with a boat that would take them to Europe, landed on Gambian soil and were eventually transferred into the custody of Gambian security forces.

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