By Kebeli Demba Nyima
The reported arrest of Sanna Manjang has produced the predictable reaction. The media is already feasting on the news like seagulls diving on a spilled packet of chips along a windy Brighton pier. Every platform is racing to post updates, some of them cutting and pasting entire reports from the Senegalese press without a single verification call or even the courtesy of crediting their sources. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the Ministry of ‘Misinformation’ under Dr Ismaila Ceesay rushing to publish a press release before Military G2 has even completed a preliminary intelligence sweep, established the operational footprint or produced a baseline threat profile. And the next predictable act will be the Ministry of Defence announcing the formation of a task force whose findings will never see the light of day. But what all this demonstrates is that Gambian journalists have the attention span of goldfish and the courage of a startled hare. Any press man or woman with a spine would not have dashed to publish a story of this weight without accompanying it with a brutal, uncompromising editorial. They are not asking questions because they lack the heart to speak truth to power or the brain to think outside the box to see what is plainly newsworthy. They are content with being spoon-fed the government’s version of the truth, operating more like the Ministry’s own press officers than reporters with a conscience.
By all accounts, the reported arrest of Lt Colonel Sana Manjang is another reminder that when it comes to Jammeh-era atrocities, justice for Gambians is being outsourced, piecemeal and case by case, to foreign courts and foreign security services, while Banjul contents itself with press releases, task forces and carefully calibrated amnesia. Despite millions of dalasis poured into the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission, The Gambia has never prosecuted a single individual for Jammeh-era crimes. Not one. The only person who has faced any form of legal sanction is Yankuba Touray, and even then it was not for murder or torture; he was imprisoned solely for refusing to testify before the TRRC. It was a contempt ruling, nothing more.
Meanwhile, foreign jurisdictions have done the substantive accountability work. Germany tried and convicted former Jungler Bai Lowe, sentencing him to life imprisonment for murders and attempted murder that amounted to crimes against humanity, including his role in the killing of journalist Deyda Hydara. Switzerland tried Jammeh’s former Interior Minister Ousman Sonko, sentencing him to 20 years for crimes against humanity. In April 2025, a United States federal court in Denver convicted Michael Sang Correa, another alleged Jungler, of torture and conspiracy to torture under universal jurisdiction laws, one of the rare instances of a non-US citizen being tried for torture committed abroad. In other words, it is not Banjul but Berlin, Bern, Denver and Celle that are doing the real work of accountability.
In contrast, a whole cast of Junglers and enablers who confessed publicly before the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission to killings, torture and disappearances continue to stroll freely around The Gambia. Solo Bojang, linked to several killings and once in exile with Jammeh, returned months ago and walks about without consequence. Ismaila Jammeh, who testified before the TRRC that he was responsible for recruiting soldiers into the Junglers, is freer than a bird and is even granted newspaper space to comment on national issues. No one troubles him with subpoenas or indictments. And he is not alone. Malick Jatta, who openly confessed to participating in killings, continues to live openly without any prosecutorial pressure. Omar Jallow, widely known as Oya, another Jungler who admitted to direct operational involvement in unlawful executions, remains untouched by the justice system.
Even figures higher up the chain of command, such as Edward Singhateh, who openly confessed before the TRRC to participating in the killing of Koro Ceesay and was implicated in several other unlawful executions, continue to live without a single prosecutorial step taken against them. Sana Sabally, who admitted to leading the November 11 executions and acknowledged responsibility for multiple killings, has likewise never been prosecuted. He returned to The Gambia, boarded his plane back to Germany and has since travelled in and out of the country multiple times without the slightest legal obstruction. Certainly no one is laying operational plans, gathering investigative files or building prosecutorial strategies to bring any of these men before a court.
Then there is the political class. Seedy Njie, who infamously tried to subvert the will of the Gambian electorate in 2017 by declaring Jammeh president in defiance of the ballot box, a textbook act of attempted constitutional subversion, is not a cautionary tale of failed treason. He was arrested upon his return from Equatorial Guinea, only to be rehabilitated and rewarded with the fourth-highest office in the land as Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly. The message is brutally clear: if you gamble against democracy and lose, you may still end up in the political penthouse, provided you are useful to the incumbents.
Other Junglers and senior figures who were named in the TRRC report, including those associated with death squads and extrajudicial executions, have not seen the inside of a courtroom in The Gambia, despite clear recommendations for prosecutions.
Even the case of General Bora Colley, who walked into Fajara Barracks and surrendered, was mishandled. There was no public charge sheet, no civil or military trial, not even a clear legal explanation. He simply remained in a silent detention until he died. The state avoided justice by waiting for nature to close the file.
This is why the rhetorical drum beating around Sana Manjang’s arrest rings so hollow. Yes, if Senegalese security services have indeed managed to locate, monitor and detain a man long regarded as a high-value suspect, they deserve acknowledgement. But let us be honest about whose victory this is and whose failure it exposes. It is Senegal’s intelligence and security apparatus that has done the work, just as it was German, Swiss and American prosecutors and judges who carried the burden of trying Jammeh-era crimes when Banjul would not. The Gambia’s role, more often than not, has been to issue statements after the fact and claim reflected glory.
The hardest question, then, is painfully straightforward: what happens if Sana Manjang is extradited to The Gambia? On the evidence so far, the likeliest scenario is not a robust, transparent prosecution but another exercise in political calculation. A state that has allowed men who confessed to killings before the TRRC to live untroubled, and has elevated a man associated with an attempted subversion of the 2016 transition to the high table of parliamentary leadership, has not earned the benefit of the doubt. Selective prosecution is not justice; it is politics by other means.
Pa Nderry Mbai of blessed memory used to say, half in jest, that the Janneh Commission report had been thrown into the Atlantic Ocean. That is, in effect, what happened to large chunks of the TRRC’s recommendations. The victims testified; the international community applauded the “model” truth commission; donors paid the bills. And yet, inside the country, the architecture of impunity remains largely intact. Foreign courts are imprisoning Junglers while The Gambia promotes, protects or simply ignores them.
So yes, Sana Manjang has reportedly been arrested and so what? Until a government that has spent years avoiding meaningful prosecutions decides at last to treat all perpetrators with equal seriousness, this latest development is not a turning point. It is another photo op in a long-running drama where justice for Gambian victims is delivered abroad, while at home the state remains content to trade in symbolism, procedural declarations and fruitless bureaucratic routines.
