For the first time since the event, Alagie Saidy-Barrow has talked about the ill-fated December 30th 2014 attack on State House that killed three of his colleagues.
In an expansive interview with The Standard, Mr Barrow was asked about the abortive attack, which led to the deaths of Lt Col. Lamin Sanneh, captain Njaga Jagne, and others.
He said: “If you read Cherno Njie’s book, you’ll see how Gambian soldiers betrayed one another. How out of fear and a lack of commitment to the ideal of freedom, some of these soldiers tried to play both sides. Do you remember Saul Badgie performing ablution and saying he was never part of December 30? I’m shocked that you, the journalists, are not asking why he needed to do that! If you do a bit of digging, you’ll find that many more people were part of the attack. Some are senior military officers still in the army today and others are very senior government officials today. But yes, as usual, Gambians betrayed each other just as we usually do with any collective endeavor! May the souls of Njagga Jagne, Lamin Sanneh, and Jaja Nyass continue to rest in peace.”
The prolific writer and former lead investigator at the TRRC, who spoke to The Standard hot on the heels of his book launch, The Dictator Is Us, went on to explain his role in the attack.
“My role was to simply assist the Gambian soldiers to accomplish what we all desired: the end of the killings and rape of our people in the hands of one man and his mandarins. You hear the detractors claiming that I ran away and left my comrades. I was the second person on the ground here and on the team, I was the last person to know the attack failed because I was not even at State House. How can you run from a place you were never at?” he asked.
Read more on Bantaba tomorrow.
