An Army Captain has gave a detail narration of how he and his fellows volunteered to guard President Adama Barrow during the political impasse.
Lamin Saidykhan gave this narration while testifying before TRRC on rights violations committed by Jammeh’s motorcade convoy during the ex-president 22-year rule in the country.
“One of my friends was there who called me and said you are an ex-serviceman; we would like your type because the coalition’s security people are civilians. I said to him I will come and when I came, he took me to the First Lady who then told me that ‘we need your type of security here because you have experience.’”
“When I moved out, I informed some of security colleagues but they were afraid to come. And I was with some of the Senegalese security men. We tried until we laid hands on one AK47 rifle,” he said.
Captain Saidykhan also explained: “The day Barrow was to go to Senegal with Ellen Sirlif Johnson– there was an accident. That was the day a plan was laid down so that they will separate Barrow’s convoy from the convoy of Ellen Sirlif Johnson, so that they would do what they wanted to do to him.
“But we got the information, so we refused to let that happened. When they left, they were looking for me almost a week but I hide.”
He added “at nights we will put stones on the road leading to his house and then we take cover so that if anyone come they will not be able to have access to his house.”
He said the day Jammeh refused to step down “Barrow gave us money to buy cutlass and we went to the markets and bought cutlasses.”
The army captain was sacked from the forces by Jammeh five years before the change of government in 2017.