By Lamin Njie
Omar Jallow has said that a senior Gambian army officer broke his eye while torturing him.
The former agriculture minister told the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission on Monday that Lieutenant Colonel Bubacarr Bah was part of a group of State Guard soldiers who arrested and tortured him in the wake of the 1994 coup.
“They were led by Musa Jammeh. They call him Malian Mungo. And then we saw Almamo Manneh and so many others. But other people joined them like Bubacarr Bah whom I saw on television… I think he’s now promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. He was then with the training school. He’s from Buniadou. He was the one who deliberately beat me on my eye and broke my eye,” Mr Jallow told the TRRC.
According to him, the senior army officer would ‘every’ morning come to his cell and told him they (soldiers) are waiting for instructions to kill him and his fellow detainees.
Mr Jallow said: “He comes every morning… Almamo Manneh and Bubacarr Bah come every morning to remind us that, ‘we are waiting for Oga’s command and we’ll kill all of you, cut you into pieces and throw you to the dogs’. And for the first one month. We were sleeping on the ground, on the sand. And they refused for us to take a bath, to wash our face or to change our clothes.”
