A disturbing news just arrived at the Faturadio news desk that, if true, will point to a very dangerous development in the state of affairs in The Gambia. A group in town calling itself Boko Haram has on Thursday, December 17, 2015 committed a gruesome murder in Serekunda that has left even the Police who have over the years seen some of the worst crimes in the African continent because of the high level of poverty and destitution – thanks to President Yahya Jammeh’s reckless style of ruling, shocked and bewildered. Jammeh recently declared Gambia an Islamic State in a move that left the Gambians and International community dumbfounded.
According the distraught source, five young boys who hail from Faji Kunda, Nema, Abuko, and Tallinding stabbed another young boy called Chaan from Wellingara to death and later went around town bragging about it wearing their blood socked clothes to show as evidence of their action to the public. They are all underage – most of them in Grade 9. One of the alleged attackers named Muhammed was said to have been surrendered by his father to the Police. This, after coming home with a bloodied shirt and telling his brother in the local language they had just killed someone that day. The father overheard the conversation and came to enquire.
To his amazement, the son looked like a butcher from an abattoir. He dragged him to the Police Station right away where the son is helping with investigations into the matter. Four of the five have all been apprehended, the alleged leader of the group is still at large and being hunted by law enforcement as we speak. The case has been moved from Bundung Police Station where it was originally brought, to Serious Crime Unit.
The murdered was trying to defend a friend who was at the time being accosted according to our source. Faturadio is still trying to determine if these kids have actually any connection to Boko Haram in Nigeria or just inspired by the brazen acts of violence against innocent civilians by that group. The latter is a more likely scenario. Either way, this will constitute a very troubling development since Yahya Jammeh’s turning Gambia into an Islamic State announcement. Before that declaration, numerous complaints have been brought to Faturadio with people expressing fear regarding the rise of radical Islam in that country.
The Talibes (students) or Marrkash as they call them in the Gambia have been raising eyebrows in the country for a while now. Stories after stories detail how random acts of violence on the streets against especially women deemed by them to be wearing clothes that are not acceptable in Islam have been arriving at our news desk for some time now.
They have also been having escalating tensions with local mosque committees because they have been insisting that those mosques are not practicing true Islam. It should be noted that this same Boko Haram group did make their presence in the country known last year causing a lot of fear at the time but those fears subsided when nothing was heard of them after that. So their coming out after Jammeh’s declaration confirms the concerns raised by Gambians and the International community that Gambia could now be a hotbed of the kinds of terrorist acts that have become all too familiar to Nigerians, Malians, and others. Senegal recently had to ban the Burqa due to concerns over terrorism.
The killed young boy is the only son of his mother who is a food vendor according to our source. This is a developing story; we will be keenly following it.
