The
circumstances surrounding the death of our ex-managing editor and co-publisher
Deyda Hydara have started coming into light, as the Magistrates’ Court in
Banjul has issued an arrest warrant for the former army commander Kawsu Camara,
alias Bombardier, and the infamous Sanna Manjang, said to be a member of the
Jungulars, the assassin team of former president Yahya Jammeh.
This
development has surfaced now after police in Banjul applied yesterday for the
apprehension of the suspects.
Therefore
it is expected that appropriate and swift actions will be taken to apprehend
the suspects wherever they may be.
It
is essential that justice takes it course and let those suspects be brought to
justice, because peace is always in jeopardy where justice is absent or
delayed.
We,
therefore, uphold the truth that there will be no peace without justice in any
society; so let justice take its course in The Gambia.
This
is more so because the arrests, detentions and subsequent deaths of many people
under the Jammeh regime are there for all to note.
Whilst
some lost their lives in the prisons due to ill health, others were allegedly
summarily killed and buried somewhere by members of the then state security
apparatus.
For
22 years, so many lives were gruesomely taken under the Jammeh regime,
including that of our own co-publisher and managing editor, Deyda Hydara.
Up
until this day, no thorough investigations and or fact-finding were carried out
by the then powers that be.
The
agony and pain, as well as the distress and emotional torture of such
horrendous happening, is still felt by not only the direct or immediate family
members and friends of the victims, but also large sectors of our population
who detest such heinous human rights abuses by the former regime.
Lives
lost in this manner cut across families, disciplines, professions and sectors
of our society – which include security officers, civil servants, politicians
and journalists.
So
many incidents of alleged killings and burying in places like the coastal
village of Tanji in Kombo South, where Solo Sandeng’s remains were exhumed, are
rumoured all around the country.
It
is, therefore, essential that such matters are being taken up and pursued.
The
new government should leave no stone unturned in getting to the facts of those
murdered, and the whereabouts of some of the missing people like journalist
Chief Manneh, under the custody of the Jammeh regime.
The
majority of our people in this country want the new government to set up a
truth and justice commission to unearth the facts and remains of those ‘cases’,
one of which is the assassinated Deyda Hydara.
The
only thing that can set us free is the truth, and nothing but the truth. So
let’s go for it.
“Justice
delayed is justice denied . ”
William
E. Gladstone
