By Adama Makasuba
Human rights perpetrators who have confessed before the nation’s Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC), have been described as wicked torturers who willingly brutalized innocent Gambians for money or favour.
The truth commission has since January 2019 heard testimonies from 321 witnesses, which included 251 male and 72 female. 208 were victims while 59 were self-confessed perpetrators and adversely mentioned persons.
Twenty-nine witnesses have testified via video link from the Gambians in Diaspora. These hearings also included several protected witnesses and closed-door testimonies; this was disclosed by the Commission.
“It was clear from the testimonies the Commission heard that the perpetrators weren’t the innocent and ignorant enablers of the dictatorship as some portrayed themselves to be. They were wicked torturers who willingly brutalized innocent Gambians for money or favour. Some perpetrators gave flimsy excuses that if they did not carry out the superior orders to torture a detainee, they would themselves be tortured. They claimed that they had no choice. But of course, they have a duty not to implement unlawful orders and no amount of explanation can excuse the cruel and inhumane treatment they inflicted on their victims,” the Commission chairman Dr Lamin Sise said in a statement.
He added: “These naked truths, albeit hard and painful, must be recorded! Indeed, the governing legislative mandate requires this Commission to investigate, among other things, the nature, causes, including antecedents, circumstances, motives and perspectives which led to the gross violations and abuses of the human rights of these detainees.”
“The TRRC was not established as a court of law or an inquisition but as a truth-seeking mechanism to create an impartial record of violations and abuses of human rights from July 1994 – January 2017 to, among other things, promote healing and reconciliation and prevent a repeat of the violations and abuses suffered by the victims.
Slowly but surely the Commission is exposing the truth of the horrifying treatment the detainees endured at the hands of state agents both at NIA Headquarters and other secret torture centres across the country.
“With regard to the implementation of the third component of the TRRC mandate, i.e., reparations, I wish to provide the following update: the TRRC Act, 2017 provides in Section 20 that “the Commission may grant reparations to an applicant who is a victim upon consideration of the evidence received or obtained,” he concluded.