‘A killer is always a killer’
BANJUL - One of the most notorious killers in Gambia sits on a grubby mattress on his brother’s stoop, uneasy in his newfound freedom.
Malick Jatta was a member of the Junglers, a death squad trained to do the dirtiest work of the country’s former President, Yahya Jammeh, whose abuses over 22 years in power are being revealed by a truth, reconciliation and reparations commission broadcast live into the living rooms of Africa’s smallest mainland nation.
The appearance of Jatta and five of his fellow Junglers over the past three weeks has been the most gripping episode yet of this reality TV of the most sinister kind.
Sitting in his uniform and beret before a panel of commissioners, Jatta, the first Jungler to testify, explained how he and his team shot dead one of Gambia’s most prominent journalists, Deyda Hydara.
The second, Omar Jallow, described in gruesome detail how he led west African migrants wrongly accused of being mercenaries to their death, one by one, before Jatta and another Jungler executed them, their bodies falling into a ditch. Jatta admitted to killing only one migrant.
Some of their victims were suffocated with plastic bags,
some they shot, others they cut into pieces or threw into wells. Their reward for this testimony was to be released, to the outrage of many Gambians, especially their victims’ families.
“A killer is always a killer,” said Aisha Jammeh, who was in the front row at the TRRC when Omar Jallow described how he tied a rope around the neck of her father, a cousin of the former president with whom he had fallen out, and helped strangle him to death.
“It’s unacceptable that these people go freely in the streets,” said Baba Hydara, son of the murdered journalist.
Letting the Junglers go was the lawful thing to do, the justice minister, Abubacarr Tambadou, told the Guardian, as none of them were charged with any crime in more than two years of detention, while other self- confessed perpetrators walked freely.