In a scene described by eye witnesses as heart wrenching, the remains of the December 30, 2014 State House attackers were exhumed this Friday March 31, 2017. The notorious killing squad locally called “Jungulars” accompanied the Police investigators and a team of forensic experts to the unmarked site where the three; U.S Army Capt. Njaga Jagne, Col. Lamin Sanneh, and Alagie Jaja Nyass were unceremoniously dumped by the same group under orders from Dictator Yahya Jammeh. The mass grave, the site of which is believed to have many other innocent victim mass graves, was located in Tintiba Forest, not far from the Dumbuto Fire Range in Bwiam.
The trio, who came to be known as Freedom Fighters, were part of a group of Diaspora Gambians that went into the country to stage a coup in a bid to end the senseless bloodshed and abuse being perpetrated against innocent Gambians by Jammeh and his henchmen. They were met with a barrage of bullets from supposed collaborators turned betrayers at the State House leading to their deaths. Modou Njie was captured during the mayhem while others were able to escape to neighboring Senegal.
Investigations into the locations of mass graves like these have been ongoing since the new Barrow government came into power but have since been met with challenges key among which is the identification of the sites because these graves were randomly picked and the culprits were operating under the cover of darkness, mostly in a hurry to cover their evil deeds. So there were no landmarks or maps to give any clues as to where people were buried or who was dumped where. However, according to one witness, the investigators had a lucky break in this case when because of a critical evidence left behind by the Jungulars – a big plastic they were wrapped in was burnt at the scene leaving marks and residue on the ground, it was easy to identify the location. This, couple with the fact that the bodies were not fully decomposed.
The bodies have already been transported to Edward Francis Small Teaching Hospital where further tests and examinations are expected to take place. Only two of the Jungulars are cooperating with investigators according to a source familiar with the matter – the rest are refusing to speak according to the same source.
Meanwhile, ongoing efforts to find the bodies of Ndure Cham, Tumani Jallow and Abdou Gaye have not yielded much results because the Jungulars are having difficulty remembering where they dumped those bodies because according our source, they claimed to have been drunk most of the times they carried these orders out and therefore not sober to know what they were doing, where they were, and when. Adding to that – all these crimes took place at night when it was very dark – always.
We will continue to follow these tragic cases of our recent history and keep our esteemed readers informed of any new information.
