Africa-Press – Gambia. A Gambian guy is going on trial in Germany on Monday in a landmark case for crimes dedicated under the united states’ dictatorship, but at home, the search for justice is proving to be long and tough.
Bai Lowe will move into the dock inside the northern city of Celle, charged with crimes against humanity, murder, and attempted murder.
He allegedly worked as a motive force for the Junglers — a demise squad that underpinned dictator Yahya Jammeh, whose 22-yr reign resulted in 2017 after he suffered a surprise election defeat and fled to Equatorial Guinea.Lowe is accused of two murders and attempted murder, one of which is the 2004 killing of a correspondent in Banjul, Deyda Hydara, who was also editor of the independent daily The Point.
Lowe will be the first alleged member of the dreaded Junglers to go on trial.
“I am confident that justice will be done,” said Hydara’s son, Baba Hydara, 45.
“Germany is a neutral country and I am expecting a fair trial.”
But he pointed to the grueling 18-year struggle to get to this point and the challenges of securing justice in The Gambia.
“There are a lot of expectations,” he said. “This is just a first battle win, but the war is still on.”Lowe is being prosecuted under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows a foreign country to prosecute crimes against humanity, including war crimes and genocide, regardless of where they were committed.
Germany has been particularly active in pursuing such cases linked to the Syrian regime, and in January sentenced a former Syrian colonel to life in jail for crimes against humanity.
– Scarred country –
The smallest nation in continental Africa and deeply impoverished, The Gambia bears many scars from the Jammeh era.
His regime was notorious for crushing dissent, through murder, disappearances, torture, rape, and castration.
Ayesha Jammeh, who works at The Gambia Center for Victims of Human Rights Violations, pointed to a lack of judicial resources but also “the lack of political will” to prosecute Jammeh’s abusers.
“It would have been much easier for us to have (the Lowe case) here in The Gambia,” she said.
“Victims could go to the courts and represent their families to ensure that they are going to be face-to-face with the persons who violated the rights of their loved one,” she said.
Jammeh’s successor, Adama Barrow, set up a South African-style Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC) to probe allegations of Jammeh-era abuses.
After hearing lengthy testimony, the panel last year published a 17-volume litany of abuses.
It was not empowered to prosecute those responsibly.
Instead, it issued a raft of recommendations, which included that Jammeh and his accomplices be brought before an international court held under the authority of the African Union or West Africa’s regional bloc, ECOWAS.
– Scepticism –
But many fear the government is dragging its feet on implementing the recommendations.
Some blame a rapprochement between Barrow and members of Jammeh’s APRC party, which they say has deepened following legislative elections this month.
His government has until May 25 to publish a white paper, and Barrow has until the end of June to announce his decisions.
Skepticism has been fed by the appointment by legislators on April 14 of a former Jammeh ally, Fabakary Tombong Jatta, as speaker of parliament.
“The speaker, the deputy speaker, these people have shown their opposition to the TRRC from the onset,” Essa Njie, 32, a political science lecturer at the University of The Gambia, told AFP.
“And now we are having those identical people in parliament (and) we’re waiting for additionally the brand new cupboard as a way to come… (might also consist of) contributors of the APRC,” he stated.
“I am enormously pessimistic that there may be justice for the sufferers on this USA,” he stated.
Perpetrators out of doors the united states of America will run the danger of prosecution underneath the precept of ordinary jurisdiction, however “perpetrators which might be here — some of them, now not all but a number of them — will probably get away punishment,” he said.
Hydara said that the Lowe case might be used to show the authorities that different channels exist for securing justice if it selected to mothball the TRRC recommendations.
“We will never just sit down and… give up,” he said. “No. We will keep on fighting.”
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