Mama Fatima Singhateh branded the human rights violations that occurred during Jammeh’s rule as ‘so-called’ and went on to say they were not in her knowledge.
“As minister of justice, most of the so-called violations that occurred was never within my knowledge. It would have been nice for these things to be brought to my attention,” Ms Singhateh sparring with Haddy Jabbie said.
Ms Singhateh and TRRC lawyer Mrs Jabbie sparred during on Thursday afternoon as her questioning intensified around her attorney general role under Jammeh.
She at one moment warned: “I was not used by anybody, I cannot be used by anybody.”
Earlier on, Ms Singhateh dismissed suggestions she knew Jammeh was directing the director public prosecutions to prosecute matters.
“I’m not aware of that,” Ms Singhateh replied when Mrs Jabbie put to her directions were given to the DPP under her watch to prosecute matters.
Also on Thursday afternoon, Ms Singhateh insisted no country in the world had a perfect human rights record.
She said: “I’m not denying that The Gambia had human rights issues. I will be pretending or I will be fooling myself if I thought that we had a perfect human rights record. But no country in this world has a perfect human rights record. We have an obligation as government officials to continue to do better and advocate for better and I did that. In cabinet and in public.
“But what I find very concerning is that foreigners would come and tell us about human rights situation in The Gambia when we had our own lawyers and so-called civil society organisations within the country who would stay mute and not say anything or draw any human rights violation to our attention and then go to the press and start crying foul for the violation of somebody’s right.”
“For a minute there, I thought it was Yahya Jammeh who was talking to us, talking about why do the foreigners or the non-Gambians etc come to tell us about our human rights record,” Mrs Jabbie blasting back at her said, making reference to Jammeh’s position foreigners had no right to preach human rights to Gambia.
