The Gambia hearings have begun which intend to investigate human rights abuses under the regime of the former dictator Yahya Jammeh.
The exact numbers of people killed or tortured, sometimes at the whims of the former president, are yet unknown. The 11-member panel hopes to document the scale of the abuses by October 2020. The hearings started broadcasting live on Facebook today
More than 1,000 witnesses are expected to testify. Among them are journalists, campaigners, and politicians who criticised Jammeh’s rule. Just wearing a T-shirt calling for democracy was enough to incur the wrath of Jammeh. And it led to arbitrary detentions often without trial, and sometimes death and disappearances.
But in January 2017 Jammeh was forced out of The Gambia after he lost the election. He went to oil-rich Equatorial Guinea where not much has been heard from him since. However a recent video surfaced in which he appears to be dancing at an official function with his host president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema. This has led to renewed calls for his extradition to The Gambia to face trial.
