By Adama Makasuba
Aunty Georgina Koso Tailor, second female witness, has explained the diabolical tortures inflicted on her by the juntas following her arbitrary arrest and detention in October 1995.
Mrs. Tailor, a born of Niani Marro in the Central River Region and a nurse by profession told the commission while testifying on Skype in California, United State of America.
“He (soldier) kicked me in my stomach…there was blood all over the places. I felt down while others started kicking me and beating me with rods (hosepipe) the bleeding lasted for a whole day with unchanged cloth, I was in pain, I can’t sleep,” she told the commission.
This, she said happened in Kairaba Avenue while trying to buy her air ticket to Freetown in Sierra Leone. She explained that she was walking on the street of Kairaba Avenue and one Sainey Manneh asked her if she was there for a demonstration and she replied him that she has no idea about a demonstration.
She explained further that she was picked up by people whom she didn’t know and was taken to Kairaba Police station where she met some people sitting on a bench before they were whisked away to Fajara Barrack and kept in a storage facility.
She said: “We were picked up late in the night, it was dark and we didn’t know where we were going to but later found ourselves at Fajara Barrack. They took us to storage… I was there Thursday and Friday we didn’t wash our face the place was dirty, no food, no cloth and no water. We couldn’t sleep because the place was dirty, it was dirty and house flies were flying all over the places. They were bringing people every day.”
Mrs. Tailor said she was the only woman kept with a number of men. She added that among the detainees she could remember includes – Jobarteh Manneh, OJ, MC Cham, Batch Samba Jallow.
“The storage facility was not good for human being to be. I was scared; I surrendered everything to God because military men with guns, nobody knows what they would do. On Saturday morning we were there, everybody prayed for us to go home back, military people jumping out of the truck insulting and said they are going to kill us. The military asked the men to lie down and they started using their boots walking on the men to their head,” she stated.
She said they were later taken to court and accused of staging a demonstration. But she said the accusation was not true.
Mrs. Tailor, whose parents are business people stated that prior to her arrest in 1995, she served as a nurse at Edward Francis Teaching Small Hospital then Royal Victoria Teaching Hospital for 10 years and but later started a business shuttle between Banjul to Las Palma.
