By Nyima Sillah
& Mariama Njie
Martin Kyere, the lone survivor of the 2005 murdered African migrants, has given testimony about the incident of 2005 massacre.
He narrated how one of the migrants’ arm was chopped off with a cutlass by a soldier as they were been transported through a forest. He gave detailed of his travelling with other murdered fellow migrants to Senegal where they were introduced to a man called Charles Taylor, who told them that he’s an American national.
While trying to make their way to Europe through what he called water journey (travelling by sea), they got stranded in the north-west of the Gambian waters (river), where they were apprehended by some police officers who had taken them to Barra Police Station before they were ferried to Banjul and later Serrekunda.
Answering more questions from the TRRC lead counsel, he narrated further through “The tarred and non-tarred roads – the car knocked a sheep and they stopped the car and they brought the death sheep between him and Kojou and the officer said you are going to travel with the death sheep. Definitely we have knowledge about what he was saying. So, in the forest we branched off that road where the pickup picked the death sheep at between 11-2pm,” he told the commission.
As narrated by him “So, we got to a place where the driver stopped the car and two soldiers come for our luggage and there was a valley. They took our luggage into the valley. Ajamo (one of themigrants) was down everybody laid on him because he was lying. He was complaining about his chest and he complained to one officer that he should help him so he can turn, the man [officer] used the cutlass to cut off his arm and asked him which one is more painful”
He testified further that he spent four days in the forest protecting himself from the people “because I was so scared that if people see me, they might report me to the nearest police station. During that stage I was only with my underwear, when the farmers saw me, they started running but another farmer saw me and asked my whereabouts.”
“So, people were trying to give me message to send to their people. I decided to jump off the vehicle I wanted to help them but the way the wire was fixed I could not. I decided to run for my life I heard a sound from my car saying who was that but I did not look back. I heard three four-gun shoot. They switch on torchlight and kept shooting to my directions but I gave myself time. I heard a sound saying God safe us, God safe us. I threw myself to the bush I spent four days in the forest trying to safe myself from the people because I feared that they will report me to the police station. I depended on forest fruits to feed myself,” he added.
