Apart from the prosecution of a few alleged perpetrators abroad, such as Bai Lowe, Ousman Sonko and Michael Sang Correa, many of those who confessed to committing heinous crimes against innocent Gambians and non-Gambians alike, are still walking freely in the streets, meeting some of their alleged victims virtually on a daily basis.
We can all recall that on the morning of December 16, 2004, Gambians were awoken to the news of Deyda’s assassination by unknown assailants. While at the time everyone suspected that the Yahya Jammeh regime had a hand in the assassination, hardly anyone knew why a harmless person like Deyda would be the target of such a cold-blooded murder. However, the queer behavior and comportment of ex-President Jammeh and some senior members of his regime towards the case, heightened suspicion that the regime indeed had something to do with it. We were all witnesses to ex-President Jammeh’s negative attitude whenever the case was mentioned, which was enough reason to believe that they indeed had something to hide.
Not only was Deyda’s family never invited to the postmortem examination, but even the autopsy report was never made available to them, even when they repeatedly requested for it. The Jammeh regime vehemently tried everything possible to not only refuse to investigate the matter, but also ensured that it was kept out of the limelight.
Therefore, something was always quite fishy with regard to the attitude of the Jammeh regime towards Deyda’s assassination. All calls by the Gambia Press Union and other rights groups for a thorough investigation of the case were ignored and the regime continued to demonstrate complete indifference to the matter. In fact, every time ex-President Jammeh commented on it, he made some ambiguous remarks which tended to confuse rather than clarify his government’s stand point on the issue.
Therefore, the confessions at the TRRC by some members of the Junglers that they participated in Deyda’s assassination did not come as a surprise to many people. It was merely a confirmation of what many had always suspected. Even the claim that they were acting on the orders of ex-President Jammeh, was not a surprise. What was however not quite obvious was why anyone would target Deyda for elimination. Anyone who intimately knew him must have known that he was an advocate for peace and social justice. Even in his journalism work, Deyda was always calling for peaceful co-existence among peoples of all races and creeds. Therefore, it is hard to understand why anyone would have wanted him dead.
It is however, also hard to comprehend why, after 21 years since that brutal killing, no serious efforts are seen to have been made to punish those culpable for his murder, to at least bring closure for his family and friends.
