A witness of the Truth Commission said the speech read on national television reportedly written by 2006 coup plotters was written under duress to implicate the allege perpetrators
Following a foiled coup plot in 2006 by close to a dozen senior officers of the Gambian army, close to 70 people, some civilians, were arrested.
Among the senior military leadership of a coup which was led by Colonel Ndure Cham was Bakary Bunja Darboe.
Darboe told the Truth Commission investigating the human rights violations of former ruler Yahya Jammeh, that his colleagues who were said to have escaped were in fact killed.
After the coup, the authorities claimed Daba Marenah, former director of National Intelligence Agency, Ebou Lowe and Malafi Corr, a former Jungler, have escaped as they were being transported to Janjanbureh prison.
However, Darboe said Lowe’s health condition was such that he could not properly walk and thus could not escape especially from an armed escort.
Darboe was tortured severely for his role in the foiled coup. He suggested that Lang Tombong Tamba was part of the coup but later pulled out.
Among the people he named who are involved in his interrogation and torture at NIA include Lang Tombong Tamba, former police chief Ousman Sonko and Alagie Martin.
Tamba, a former chief of the army is not the vice president of the Gambia Football Federation, Alagie Martin is a serving general in the Gambian army while Ousman Sonko is currently being tried in Switzerland.
Meanwhile, Darboe also told the Commission that the speech he read on the National television was imposed on him.
There was no speech to be read as part of the coup but the interrogation panel at NIA forced him to create one, he said.
And this was the speech that would later come to be presented in court as evidence in their case. Darboe and others were pardoned by Jammeh in 2015.
“I did not write any speech but I was made to write a speech in the conference hall… They said I must produce a speech. I wrote one page. And this was the speech they presented to Yahya Jammeh,” said Darboe.
“On my free will, I was not going to read the statement. It was a fraudulent speech.”
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