‘Gov’t is not active enough in campaign to try Jammeh in Ghana’

By Omar Bah Madi Jobarteh, the country representative of the Westminster Foundation, has said that ‘although the Barrow government has committed itself to the campaign to try Jammeh in Ghana’ they have not done enough to that effect. “We have the assurances of the governments of The Gambia and Ghana but they need to go beyond that and put it into practice,” Jobarteh, who is also a member of the #Jammeh2Justice Campaign team, told The Standard yesterday. Mr Jobarteh said the Gambia government needs to demonstrate much more interest and commitment and not to just a mere verbal commitment. “The Gambia government should send high powered delegation to Ghana to workout the modalities while Ghana also has the responsibility to act without waiting for The Gambia because it is their citizens that are concerned in this particular matter. They can also send their own lawyers here to workout the modalities on how to run these investigations. The two parties will need to discuss the individuals and areas they should visit among other things,” Jobarteh said. He continued: “The issue is we are not seeing this kind of action taken between the two governments. As for us we are moving in the right way and we are confident because the evidence is compelling and it has all the legal basis to make this happen provided that the two governments take further steps to put their commitments into practice.” Jobarteh went on to say that the Jammeh2Justice crusade is not a foreign initiative, but a joint initiative led by the victims with the support of the CSOs and other international partners. “The Gambia government must take it responsibility by ensuring that whosoever damages the right of Gambians is brought to justice. This is a constitutional obligation the government must fulfill,” he said. He said there is need to look at things from a moral point of view because if those 45 Ghanaians were the children or families of the President of Ghana or that of The Gambia they are not going to forget it like that. “So we should look at these things morally so that we get to do what we are supposed to do legally and politically,” he added. In May this year, Trial International, Human Rights Watch and the Gambia Centre for Victims of human rights violations, issued a report from a joint investigation into the matter which among other things revealed that the Ghanaian migrants were killed by Junglers and not by rogue elements as the former government claimed at the time. International human rights lawyer, Reed Brody, who recently served as counsel for victims of former Chadian dictator, Hissène Habré, is leading the campaign #Jammeh2Justice. The activist was recently in the country with his team to scale up their action for the new government to fully support the initiative taken by Ghana to extradite and prosecute Jammeh in their country.]]>