SERREKUNDA, Gambia (AP) — West African regional bloc ECOWAS agreed Sunday to the creation of a special court to try crimes committed in Gambia during its military dictatorship.
The landmark decision was announced at the summit of regional heads of state in the Nigerian capital Abuja.
The court will look into alleged crimes committed under military dictator Yahya Jammeh, whose rule from 1996 to 2017 was marked by arbitrary detention, sexual abuse and extrajudicial killings. Jammeh lost the 2016 presidential election and went into exile in Equatorial Guinea a year later after initially refusing to step down.
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Calls for justice for the victims of the dictatorship had been growing for years in Gambia, a country surrounded by Senegal except for a small Atlantic coastline. In 2021, a truth commission in the country concluded its hearings with strong recommendations, urging the government to bring the perpetrators to justice.
In May, Jammeh’s former interior minister was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a Swiss court for these crimes against humanity. In November, a German court convicted a Gambian man, Bai Lowe, of murder and crimes against humanity for involvement in the murder of government critics in Gambia. The man was a driver for a military unit that was deployed against Jammeh’s opponents.
The Gambian Ministry of Justice described the move in a statement as a “historic development” that “marks an important step forward for The Gambia, the region and the international community.”
