According to an urgent alert sent to The Fatu Network by Ministry of Interior insiders, Journalist Alagie Ceesay collapsed in Mile 2 this Friday, April 8, 2016 and rushed to the hospital. His condition was described as serious when this article was being put together.
This latest incident came on the heels of reported denial of visitation rights for the journalist whose incarceration was met with condemnation from both human rights groups and governments around the world alike. Senators Dick Durban and Patrick J. Leahy were the latest to issue statements urging the Jammeh regime to release the young man. Even the UN Human Rights Council was unequivocal in its condemnation of Jammeh’s continuing abuse of Alagie, calling his detention Arbitrary. Below we produce the letter:
According to the Ministry of Interior sources, Alagie’s ongoing illness which was attributed to torture he received in the hands of the security agents and poor food he is forced to eat – since his family has been denied the access to him after repeated requests to be given a chance to bring him food, took a turn for the worse this past Thursday, April 7, 2016. True to form, the Prison ignored his request for medical attention leading to his collapse the next day.
Alagie’s ordeal epitomizes the degree to which human rights abuse in this country of 1.9 million inhabitants has worsen – the state machinery is being used as an instrument of oppression. Murder, torture, disappearance, illegal firing, and humiliation of innocent citizens have become so common place, Alagie’s torture and subsequent incarceration on bogus charges didn’t even raise eyebrows of this traumatized population. The burden of fighting for his freedom inevitably, just like many others before him, fell on the Gambian activists in the Diaspora and human rights groups. Jeffrey Smith, a former Africa Advocate at Robert F. Kennedy Center has been very instrumental in highlighting his plight. The concern among Gambians is that if the world doesn’t act on Alagie’s behalf, he will eventually fall in the same category as Sheriff Dibba, a former Trade Unionist who died in detention because of the abuses and denials of critical medical care at time of need leading to his death.
The kangaroo court through which Alagie is being tried and the proceedings of his case have been described by observers as nothing but a joke and typical travesty of justice that has been pervasive in The Gambia since Yahya Jammeh’s forceful takeover of power in July 1994. This past Thursday was the umpteenth time the case has been adjourned and mostly for the most frivolous of reasons: Judge has a seminar to attend, Alagie is too sick to come to court, witness cannot attend, among many others. To make matters worse, and a glaring example of the gross injustice of the case, is the absconding of the key Prosecution witnesses, one of them Alagie’s girlfriend, to a neighboring country claiming they were being forced to lie about Alagie because Jammeh wanted to continue forcefully sleeping with his girlfriend. As it turned out, Alagie was also the subject of the regime’s which-hunt because the radio station he manages was translating news articles, some of which are critical of the regime, into local languages – Jammeh found that unacceptable. So the case has been fraught with convoluted, unrelated, and mostly trivial issues not worthy of any investigation, from the beginning, confirming the suspicion of critics from the get-go that this case is nothing but yet another effort by President Jammeh to silence yet another innocent Gambian.
Fatu Network is following this latest development with keen interest and will update our readers and listeners as more information becomes available.
