By Lamin Sanyang
Honourable Momodou LK Sanneh, Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly has called on the office of the Inspector General of Police and The Ministry of Justice to urgently look into the continuous detention of prisoners who are locked up for decades without trial at the remand wing of the State Central Prison in Banjul.
Honourable Sanneh raised these concerns at the national stakeholders conference on justice and human rights at Kairaba Beach Hotel.
“I am appealing to the Inspector General of Police and Ministry of Justice to urgently look into the cases of those detained at remand for 10–15 years without being taken to court,” Deputy Speaker Momodou LK Sanneh asserted.
He further pointed out: “We have to act quickly to solve these problems now that we are living in a new Gambia.”
Deputy Speaker Sanneh who was incarcerated along with the executives of the United Democratic Party by the former dictator said there are many people languishing in the remand wing for more than a decade without being charged. He added that over twenty people are locked up in small cell of 4 by 4 metros.
“These cells are unventilated,” he lamented.
Lawyer Janet Sallah Njie, former President of the Female Lawyers Association Gambia FLAG also emphasised on some of the issues raised by the deputy speaker. She argued that focus should not be place only on the past but the present is equally important. She said some of the prison conditions under the past regime still exist in the present administration.
Lawyer Sallah Njie explained her recent visit to the Janjangbureh Prisons at the provincial part of the country. She called on the need to improve the conditions of the prisons. She further called for institutional reforms of the judiciary and professional conducts of magistrates in the dispensation of free trial.
Meanwhile, several issues of transitional justice as a mechanism to overcome past human rights violations, prosecution as a form of transitional justice mechanism and forms of reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence were among the topics discussed at the national stakeholders conference on justice and human rights.
