Yusupha Mbaye who testified before the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC) on Monday disclosed that the former CDS Baboucar Jatta disappeared during their negotiations with the paramilitaries and after that his disappearance, the paramilitaries started shooting life bullets at students who were demonstrating on Aril 10 2000.
Explaining how he got to know the demonstration, he said that he woke up early morning on that faithful day and prepared for normal schooling, but didn’t know that there was supposed to be a demonstration.
He added that upon arrival at his former school – Pipeline Comprehensive School, now Daddy Jobe, his colleague Omar Gassama informed him about the demonstration that was to be held from GTTI to Westfield.
“As we moved out of the school going towards where Africell was, we found many students and we saw paramilitaries with their teargas and batons. They asked us to disperse and we refused, and they started throwing teargas.”
He continued that they ran to Westfield where two people were shot and he saw the former CDS coming to negotiate with the paramilitaries as a request from the students.
“During the negotiations, as I was at the back. He just disappeared and paramilitaries started shooting life bullets at the students. As I was running for my life, I ended up seeing myself at the Banjul hospital. There, I was told that they shot me in my back.”
He said at the hospital, Assi Jallow, a nurse attached to him explained that he was marked number one of the death bodies because they thought he had died after remaining unconscious for three days.
“Because of the bullet, I am now paralysed from the neck down. I got a feeding tube then and I developed bed source which later gave me an infection.”
He pointed that the nurses who used to come at night, were not doing enough in helping him, while adding that he was at the hospital with Assan Suwareh who was shot in the stomach, Farra who was also shot and sustained injuries and a child who was shot in the head.”
After confirming that the former president, Yahya Jammeh visited them and did send former state house worker, Fatoumatta Jahumpa-Ceesay to give them some foods and some money, he said they used to give it out as charity because they didn’t want anything from him, saying: “you cannot kill someone and mourn the person.”
After Banjul hospital, he said he went to Egypt for overseas treatment, sponsored by The Gambia government but said the sponsor was not enough to complete the whole treatment.
“In 2001, I got my second treatment in Scotland in Nine Wheel Hospital ordered by Jammeh. I was escorted by Doctor Tumani Bojang but I was not treated because the money paid for me was seized by the hospital to settle debts owed by The Gambia government.”
The witness said he spent three days in his hospital bed and he was assisted by DOGA DC in 2014 with the ‘Go Fund Me Project’ that was established by Gambians in abroad to help victims of April 10 for overseas treatment in Senegal.
In his concluding remarks, he said the incident changed his life because he was going to school to benefit himself and the family, but nevertheless he could not do anything for himself.
