By: Adama Makasuba

Pa Modou Faal, a journalist has said that they didn’t sleep for three nights during their detention at the National Intelligent Agency in 2009 saying they were detained in an opened mosquito’s area at the NIA.

Mr. Faal, who became eighth witness in row since the Truth Reconciliation and Reparation Commission commenced its Institutional hearings last week, was the treasurer of the Gambia Press Union at the time.

“The first night was terrible….it was an open place full of mosquitoes. Knowing the NIA at that time we were thinking that the ‘jungulars’ will come for. We didn’t sleep…three nights we didn’t sleep,” Mr. Faal told the Truth Commission while testifying on Tuesday.

Mr Pa Modou Faal and six other journalists were arrested by the former regime in connection to reaction press release issued by the Gambia Press Union about former President Yahya Jammeh’s remarked to the slain journalist Deyda Hydara in an interview with the GRTS.

Meanwhile, he said later they were ‘smuggled’ to the Kanifing Magistrate Court without being allowed lawyers and charged with ‘sedition.’

He however, said they applied for bail but that it was rejected by the Magistrate Court and that it was Justice Sainabou Wada who was presiding over their case at the Kanifing Magistrate Court.

He said that their case was transferred to High Court in Banjul before Justice Joseph Wowo, adding that Justice Joseph Wowo also refused them a bail and sent them to remand at the Mile Two central prison.

He said: “very terrible, over 100 people were in Mile Two remand wing  and 40 people shared a shared a cell.”

However, he  told the Commission that they were later granted a bail at a bond amount of 300,000 dalasi and that they were asked to report to the nearest police station on daily basis.

He said they were later convicted and sentenced to two years in prison, but that they spent only twenty-seven (27) years in prison after international pressure mounted on the former president Yahya Jammeh.