Murdered Ghanaians Taken For Rebels
Monday, 18 May 2009

DAILY GUIDE has gathered that the about 44 Ghanaians and 9 other
African nationals who were reportedly murdered in Gambia in 2005 were
mistaken for a band of mercenaries that had sneaked into the country
to oust Gambian President Yahya Jammeh through guerrilla warfare.

A Ghanaian who managed to escape after he was bundled alongside those
that were murdered had narrated an eye-witness account of the bloody
ordeal and is insisting that the dead were actually killed in Gambia
but not murdered elsewhere and dumped in the country as was being
alleged by the Gambian authorities.

Ghana’s former Foreign Minister, Akwasi Osei-Adjei, disclosed this in
an exclusive interview with DAILY GUIDE, and indicted President Jammeh
of deliberately thwarting painstaking efforts at reaching an amicable
settlement on the matter saying that this lack of cooperation from the
Gambian President had created an erroneous impression that Ghana was
relaxed over the murder of its citizens.

He said one of the reasons why Yayah Jammeh is opposed to
investigating the issue is that the opposition parties in Gambia have
accused him of having personally ordered the said killings and he
fears that it would be used in dragging him to the human rights
courts.

He said though Ghana has never considered going to war with Gambia
over the issue, it was clear that all diplomatic means in solving the
issue have been exhausted and the only option left is to drag Gambia
to the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

Mr. Osei-Adjei said the Gambian government has turned down repeated
proposals from the New Patriotic Party (NPP)-led government that the
buried corpses should be exhumed and brought to Ghana and compensation
paid to the bereaved families.
He explained that though the Gambian officials on the negotiation team
admitted the proposal was a novelty, they confessed that Yahya Jammeh
would not take it kindly and that they could not relay the information
to him.

“There was a time our Gambian counterparts agreed that our
recommendation was a novelty but they asked me, ‘who was going to tell
the big boss?’...When we first went to Gambia over this issue, the
bodies were still in the morgue but when they realised we were getting
closer to the end of the case, the Gambians quickly buried them
without our approval or consent and we were very unhappy about that.

“Another challenge is that the Ghanaian community resident in Gambia
is almost over a hundred and fifty thousand and anytime we are getting
closer to the case, then the Ghanaian community there starts to
receive all sorts of negative signals that they would be victimised if
anything goes wrong,” the former Minister disclosed.

Osei-Adjei said recent reports in the media that the African Union and
the United Nations had directed that the bodies should be brought to
Ghana was nothing new and that Gambia had over the years turned down
the same request from Ghana.

“The report that we have now is just an advisory recommendation that
does not indict them in any way; it is just arbitration and that is
why it did not say who killed the Ghanaians and who gave instructions
for them to be killed... the content is the same thing that we gave to
them which they turned down,” Osei-Adjei noted.

The former Minister said a Ghanaian national who was with the murdered
souls has disclosed to the Ghana government that they arrived in
Gambia in a hired boat from Senegal and that they were to join a
bigger ship that was on its way to Europe but was waiting for them on
the Gambia territorial waters because it was too big to dock in either
Senegal or Gambia.

The escapee reportedly disclosed that when they reached Gambia, the
leader of the group pretended he was receiving a phone call but never
came back and that after some hours, the owner of the boat said the
hours for which he was hired had expired so he left back to Senegal.

Osei-Adjei narrated: “As they were waiting, unknown to them, the
Gambian authorities had picked signals that some mercenaries would be
arriving from Senegal to overthrow Yayah Jammeh....The group again
chartered another canoe to take them to the high sea but unknown to
them, the owner of this second boat is also a security officer so he
quickly called for re-enforcement and got them arrested and taken to a
warehouse.

“The Gambian authorities then came for them in groups of four at a
time and took them away in a pick-up vehicle till eventually one
heavily built Nigerian among them suggested that since those that had
been taken away were not being brought back, it was possible they were
being murdered so those who can should run for their lives and that he
was ready to fight them.”

The former Minister said when the officials came for another set and
had gone mid-way, the Nigerian engaged them in a fight till he was
shot but that paved way for some of the victims to escape and that was
how the Ghanaian survivor managed to escape till he found his way back
to Senegal.

By Halifax Ansah-Addo

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