By Rtd Lt Colonel Samsudeen Sarr,
former commander of the GNA
I have chosen, with deliberate patience, to let the smoke clear and the echo of rehearsed outrage subside—whether driven by genuine grief or the cyclical outbursts of self-styled moral crusaders who annually weaponise the events of April 10 and 11, 2000, not to heal the wounds of our nation, but to settle political scores under the veneer of justice.
The bloodshed of those two fateful days remains an indelible stain on our national conscience—grievously painful to victims and their families, yes, but also to the many Gambians, including members of the then-APRC government, who are still scapegoated with monolithic accusations of orchestrating a “massacre.”
Let the record show: I was not in The Gambia when the tragedy struck. I had been unjustly dismissed as Commander of the Gambia National Army a year prior and was living in political exile in the United States. My books—Coup d’état by The Gambia National Army (2007) and Testimony of a Retired Gambian Military Officer and Diplomat (2024)—bear witness to my ordeal and loud condemnation of the government’s tone-deaf response. I vocally rejected the absurd narrative that “criminal elements” and opposition agitators were to blame for the chaos. That was a coward’s excuse, a political sedative to pacify outrage.
As the former Commander of the Army and a trained military officer, I dismantled the hollow claim that rubber bullets were deployed, or that police armouries were ransacked by unruly youth. Our security apparatus possessed no such non-lethal weaponry, and the procedures guarding police weaponry were far too stringent for such breaches. I made these facts known as early as April 2000, through the once-vibrant Gambia-L online forum, not to excuse the horror but to confront it with sober truth.
Condemnation, however, is only the beginning of responsibility. To understand how such a calamity unfolded—and to prevent its recurrence—we must interrogate the systemic decay that preceded it.
Before the 1994 coup, the Gambia Police Force’s Tactical Support Group (TSG)—an elite unit modelled after the Senegalese Gendarmerie—served as a disciplined, tactically astute body capable of handling civil unrest with measured force. When the Senegalese withdrew in 1989, they took their equipment but left behind an institutional memory of order. That memory, too, was soon erased.
The 1994 military coup didn’t just upend a government—it dismantled a delicate balance. The TSG was cannibalised and fused into the army, stripping the police of their teeth. Officers, many of whom were veterans of the Jawara era, were purged without due process—judged guilty by association, rather than by conduct. In their place, gun-slinging soldiers like Sanna Sabally, Sadibou Hydara, and Edward Singhateh, took the reins of law enforcement, dragging the country into a militarised abyss. Arrests, detentions, and even public order management were now the business of the barracks, not the badge.
The creation of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) further emasculated the police, turning them into mere spectators in their own field. The outcome was predictable: a demoralised, hesitant, and impotent force incapable of managing civil disturbances without triggering bloodshed.
I, too, was made a cautionary tale. In July 1994, I was accused-absurdly-of attempting to assassinate Yahya Jammeh with bullets allegedly deflected by his supernatural “juju.” I spent ten months in the infamous Mile Two Prisons for that fictitious charge, only to be released without explanation and appointed Deputy Army Commander. It was a nightmarish ordeal with 35 other detained military and police officers, emblematic of a nation suspended between delusion and dictatorship.
We all know what followed: the execution of the November 11 mutineers, the chilling murder of Finance Minister Ousman Koro Ceesay, the stabbing of a well-known doctor at Denton Bridge, the silencing of dissenters. These atrocities were neither myths nor state secrets. Captain Ebou Jallow and I exposed many of them while in exile. But what was the public’s response? Silence. Willful, fearful, sometimes opportunistic silence. Most chose complicity over confrontation, survival over principle.
That’s why I bristle when I hear the likes of Seedy Njie, Fabakary Tombong Jatta, or Colonel Baboucarr Jatta being vilified as architects of tyranny—as if they alone bore the moral burden of a regime enabled by thousands. Where were the journalists, the civil servants, the judges, the bankers, musicians, the imams and priests, the teachers and technocrats, when Jammeh ruled unchallenged? Many now drape themselves in the robes of righteousness after having dined at the banquet of autocracy.
President Barrow, too, is not spared. His alliance with former APRC figures is condemned as betrayal by critics who themselves once vied for favour under Jammeh’s patronage. Let us dispense with the sanctimony. The truth is, complicity was not the exception—it was the rule. And scapegoating a handful of individuals to satisfy a revisionist thirst for retribution serves neither history nor justice.
I paid close attention to the TRRC testimonies of former Vice President Isatou Njie-Saidy, CDS Colonel Baboucarr Jatta, and Interior Minister Ousman Badjie. None admitted receiving a shoot-to-kill order from Jammeh as the Commission wanted them to. I believe them. The state was in disarray, and the death of a student in Brikama lit a fuse under a decaying order. What followed was not a calculated execution but a collapse—a state without the institutional strength to respond with precision or proportionality.
As a former army commander and student of military psychology, I can attest: 80% of soldiers, even in active combat, hesitate to kill unless under direct threat. What occurred in April 2000 was not a massacre plotted in smoke-filled rooms—it was the tragic fruit of institutional erosion, mistrust, and a leadership overwhelmed by events beyond its competence.
I know Baboucarr Jatta. The man lacks the brutality attributed to him by armchair analysts. He once acted to prevent extrajudicial killings, to rein in overzealous troops. Whatever his faults, I do not for a moment believe he would sanction the cold-blooded murder of unarmed schoolchildren.
In the aftermath, the government did offer medical support and financial compensation to victims. Some families expressed public gratitude. Yet these gestures have been conveniently erased by today’s arbiters of outrage, who demand political executions masked as justice.
Let us not pretend that lessons were not learned. The establishment of the better-trained, better-equipped Police Intervention Unit (PIU) is evidence that the void left by the TSG has been addressed. We are not where we were. We have evolved, painfully but purposefully.
But a final warning is in order: those who would render this country ungovernable in the name of revolutionary zeal must heed the ghosts of April 2000. Any government—whether Barrow’s, Jammeh’s, or one yet to come—cannot, and will not, stand idle while anarchy is brewed under the banner of “change.”
April 2000 was not merely a moment of state failure—it was a mirror held up to an entire nation. And until we all have the courage to look into it without flinching, we will remain trapped in a cycle of selective memory and hollow absolution.
