The Gambia Journal (Banjul) 
NEWS

By Mbaye B. Sarr & Mohammed L. Sillah


  Part 1 of 3  
  As the Gambia Journal continues with its series of investigative reports on the suspected corrupt deals by the Jammeh regime, we, in this article, expose some of President Jammeh's most hair-raising connections with a motley crowd of hustlers, mobsters, ultra-conservative Republican Party politicians, and notorious criminal arms and diamond dealers. 
   
  Some time in 1998 the then OAU was having a special Libyan-sponsored Summit in the Gabonese capital. President Jammeh was invited but could not attend. Relations between Jammeh and the Libyan leader had soured, and perhaps because of this, 
   
  Jammeh who relishes such gatherings, for once stayed away. Instead he sent his Vice President Aja Isatou Njie Saidy who flew in with a Soviet-made passenger plane of then unclear ownership but managed by the now defunct Banjul-registered New Millennium Airlines. When a little later, the then Central African President Lissouba arrived at the same Airport, he was being congratulated by his host, Gabonese President Omar Bongo. At first the Central African leader looked dazed at his host's congratulatory remarks, not knowing what Mr. Bongo might be referring to. Noticing his guest's apparent bewilderment, the Gabonese President pointed to the New Millennium Aircraft on the airport tarmac that he mistakenly thought brought President Lissouba to the summit. 
   
  Mr. Lissouba looked at the aircraft and was aghast to see that the aircraft indeed carried the flag and seal of the Central African Republic. He flew in to a rage when he got to know that the plane in fact flew in with the Gambian delegates headed by Vice President Aja Isatou Njie-Saidy. Mr. Lissouba wanted to seize hold of the plane there and then. It was only the diplomatic intervention of President Bongo that saved the plane from being impounded. 
   
  The aircraft had had a nebulous history. Before being registered in The Gambia as the IL-62 (C5-GNM) [Gambia], it had been CCCP-86511 [USSR], RA-86511 [Russia], 3D-RTI [Swaziland], and finally, TL-ACL [Central African Republic]). In the Central Africa Republic it had been used to supply weapons to Savimbi's rebel army, then active in Angola, and combatants fighting in the nonsense civil wars that then raged in Liberia and Sierra Leone, returning with precious but illegal gems of diamonds for the lucrative international market. The aircraft and its owner, Mr. Victor Bout, have become the ultimate icons of what has become known as the internationally deplored "Blood Diamonds" affairs. 
   
  When pressures for the arrest of Mr. Bout became unbearable and an international arrest warrant was issued by the UN system, Mr. Bout escaped from Bangui, capital city of the Central African Republic and went into hiding. The elusive Mr. Bout demonstrated his capacity to escape justice and his versatile capacity to seek refuge in failed or rogue states, beyond the arms length of international justice. Viktor Vasilevich (aka Anatoliyevich) Bout is a Russian and former flight lieutenant of the Soviet Army. He is known to have carried several different passports, including various Liberian diplomatic ones, two Russian and one Ukrainian. He goes around with different names, including Viktor Bout, Butt, Bont, Butte, Boutov, and Vitali Sergitov, born January 13, 1967 and January 13, 1970. 
   
  Jammeh is also believed by many to be deeply involved in the drug business. Jammeh has many times publicly referred to his "endless private wealth." Several years after taking over power, a record catch of heroin was discovered in a container destined for the Gambia but captured in a Mauritanian port by DEA agents. Several years ago another container loaded with cocaine and imported in by a well-known Lebanese businessman was discovered by unknowing Gambian customs officials at the Port of Banjul, only to be released quietly. 
   
  It is not yet clear how Mr. Bout came into contact with President Jammeh and his former leading henchman Baba Jobe in the first place, but a document that the Gambia Journal is in possession of reads: "since the small narrow West African country has become a central base of operations for notorious Russian international arms smuggler Viktor Bout. The Gambia is the headquarters for one of many of Bout's front companies, companies that are used to smuggle everything from weapons to diamonds and mercenaries to international relief supplies. In fact, Bout was the character on whom fictional arms smuggler Yuri Orlov, played by Nicolas Cage in the movie Lord of War, was largely based." 
   
  The document writes that Victor Bout was former Liberian war lord and President, Charles Taylor's primary arms and diamond smuggler. Bout and his associates were given Liberian diplomatic passports and, with Taylor's blessing and protection, they registered a number of their front companies in Monrovia, the Liberian capital. Perhaps this was how the connection was established. 
   
  Baba Jobe was close to a number of Gambian mercenaries fighting on Taylor's side during the Liberia's fourteen year civil war. In his hey days as a strongman in the Jammeh regime, Mr. Jobe did travel frequently to Monrovia. A close relative of his was Liberia's ambassador to Libya and another was Taylor's chief body-guard. This belief is strengthened all the more by the fact that once the New Millennium Airlines Ltd. Was registered in Banjul, with headquarters at Sate House, Baba Jobe was made the Managing Director. The company's only plane ran both as a passenger plane taking pilgrims to Mecca and a pr esidential aircraft carrying Jammeh on his many shuttles. According to a commercial aviation database, "the firm acted as a cover for Victor Bout's operations. Its one aircraft, a Russian-made passenger jet, was acquired from Central African Airlines." 
   
  For two consecutive years from 2002, Jobe placed an effective ban on other private pilgrim carriers to impose a sort of a monopoly for the lucrative business of taking pilgrims to Mecca for the annual Hajj. At around the end of that same year, a UN Panel of Experts investigating the blood diamond affairs in Liberia and Sierra Leone recommended that Baba Jobe, his New Millennium Airlines company itself, Mr. Bout, the former Liberian President on a list of people whose assets were frozen and who were banned from traveling. Jammeh had his Ambassador at the United Nations as well as his Secretary of State for External Affairs fight tooth and nail to have Mr. Jobe expunged from that list without any success. Again in November 30th 2005, even with Mr. Jobe incarcerated by his former boss in Banjul, a United Nations Report on blood diamonds mentioned Bout's New Millennium Airlines and Baba Jobe, personally. 
   
  As the trial of Charles Taylor on war crimes starts unfolding, Gambian observers are holding their breath in anticipation of what Mr. Taylor may divulge on his dealings with President Jammeh. Their lines have crossed too many times for observers not to believe so. It was not only Bout's connections that the two West African "leaders" shared. Taylor was known to be a business partner with Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson. Robertson's organization mentored Richard Hines. Mr. Hines was in 2004 hired as President Jammeh's lobbyist for US$300 000 annually to help brush up Gambia's international image. More on this on part two of this investigative report. 



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