21.2 C
City of Banjul
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
spot_img
spot_img

Ex-NIA Director Counters Junglers On Ndure Cham’s Killing

- Advertisement -

By Mafugi Ceesay

Yankuba Badjie, a former director of National Intelligence Agency, has in a communication with The Standard responded to comments made at the TRRC by Junglers about his alleged role in the execution of Col. Ndure Cham, the leader of the 2006 coup plot. Cham was arrested from his village in NBR during one of his secret visits from his exile base in Senegal and summarily executed allegedly on Jammeh’s orders in 2013.

Jungler Amadou Badjie had told the TRRC that when he and Pa Sanneh were on duty on the last day Ndour Cham spent at the NIA Annex in Tanji the then Director of NIA, Yankuba Badjie and General Saul Badjie picked Ndour Cham from there and from that day he never saw Ndour Cham again.

- Advertisement -

“I was surprised to hear my name mentioned by the Junglers claiming that I was the NIA director that received the former army chief of defense staff, Ndure Cham, from his detention cell at Tanji village to be handed over to the junglers to execute him.”
“Ndure Cham died in 2013 and I only became director general of the NIA in 2014, a year after the death of Cham. So the story of the Junglers cannot be correct because I was not the director at the time,” he said.

Badjie also revealed that the junglers only used the NIA to safe keep their detainees and would come for them when they needed them.

“So when they (Junglers) arrest people and bring them to the NIA, I put them there, until when they needed them back, they will collect them. It is just like prison. When they bring people for keeping you cannot reject them,” Badjie said.

- Advertisement -

Impasse
Mr Badjie further disclosed that during the 2017 political impasse, security chiefs were not clearly decided on what to do. He explained that some security chiefs suggested they all go to pledge their allegiance to Barrow as the President-elect in secret, but he had rejected that and told his counterparts that if he was to go, he must go there in the open with nothing to hide. He said his colleagues could not convince him to visit Barrow in secret so they did not go until after Jammeh left.

2016 election results
The former NIA director also explained that he was among those who convinced Jammeh to accept the results initially.
“I had asked him who can explain the figures more efficiently and he referred me to the Gambia Bureau of Statistics, GBoS. I went to GBoS and received detailed explanation and methods of tabulation from the Statistician General Nyakassi Sanyang which I took to Jammeh and managed to convince him to accept the election results,” Badjie said.

Join The Conversation
- Advertisment -spot_img
- Advertisment -spot_img