On the eve of the Eidul Adha feast, the presidency announced the pardoning of six or seven prisoners in exercise of the President’s prerogative of mercy.
This has become the tradition that every feast, the president of the Republic would pardon some people.
However, this time around this announcement raised a lot of questions as a plethora of human rights activists spoke out against the pardon/release of one particular prison – a Norwegian national.
The said prisoner is said to be a paedophile who was even wanted in his home country. His crimes in The Gambia were also related to paedophilia.
The question however is how his name got included in a list of people to be pardoned by the president. It was revealed later that the minister of Justice, who should normally be part of the committee that recommends a list of such people, was not even in town.
The issue here is, why wasn’t due process followed to avoid such mistakes?
The only good thing is that now that there has been an outcry against his release, the Ministry of the Interior has come out to announce that the decision has been rescinded.
Could it have been avoided and handled better?
