By Adama Makasuba
Former Attorney General and Minister of Justice has told the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC) that security officers deployed on the eve of April 10/11 shot students with live bullets and injured dozens of others.
Joseph Henry Joof, who was also a member of the Commission was testifying before the TRRC as the commission continuing its sitting on Monday, 26th April, 2021, looking into judiciary sector under former Gambian leader Yahya Jammeh.
“Once again, it’s almost 20 years since then. So, off the cuff all I can say is that those soldiers and members of the security forces who were deployed on the day actually fired on the school children and they killed some of those children. Others were tortured unlawfully, detained unlawfully,” he said.
Meanwhile, he defended the commission that looked into the April 10/11 incident saying: “I believe they did because we were set out to that and we had no other reason for arriving at the decision we did. We were ever concern about the fate of those children about what happened and ensure that it never happened again in The Gambia.”
“We were interested in evidence,” he said, but added many of the witnessed didn’t however go direct in mentioning the name of the person who gave them order to shoot. As I said they were saying mostly is from the above. But we tried to follow the chain-of-command and they were heads of platoon who were there that day because it has all kinds of connotation [including] civil and criminal liability.
“We set out to look into that but the evidence we have was not sufficient to pin liability on any other person at the time. If somebody comes and said X did this, Y said this…we were very apprehensive of any political motive or other motive and so we felt we were safe to conceive to hard evident on the ground at the time,” Mr Joof explained.