By Kebeli Demba Nyima, Atlanta, USA
The arraignment of former Jungler Sana Manjang before a local magistrate on Wednesday signals one thing: the state has prioritised legal optics over operational necessity. From a spycraft standpoint, this sequence is incorrect. A high-value detainee of his profile should never reach the courtroom dock before the exploitation phase is fully exhausted.
Exploitation is the nerve of all serious intelligence work. It is the phase in which interrogators extract intelligence that maps networks, identifies associates, reveals safe houses, reconstructs command hierarchies and enables the location and capture of fugitives. It is the most critical part of handling a detainee linked to a clandestine lethal unit such as the Junglers. Once legal proceedings begin, access narrows, questioning becomes restricted and the window for intelligence collection closes.
Everything that happened in court today is legally sound but operationally premature. Legal processes adjudicate guilt. Intelligence processes dismantle structures. These two objectives cannot be sequenced casually, especially when dealing with an individual who operated inside an extrajudicial command system.
From an intelligence view, three failures are already visible.
1. No visible signs of structured exploitation before arraignment.
There is no indication that a coordinated exploitation cell involving SIS, Military Intelligence, GPF investigators and TRRC analysts was activated. Intelligence value decays rapidly. Every day lost reduces the chances of extracting high-grade information on the remaining Junglers, support networks, facilitators and cross-border movements.
2. His behaviour in court confirms he has not been adequately processed.
His refusal to speak is not the normal posture of a detainee who has undergone complete exploitation. It suggests he remains psychologically unbroken, unchallenged and unassessed. A subject who still believes he controls the pace is a subject who has not been properly handled.
3. Transfer to Mile 2 at this stage restricts operational access.
Once a detainee enters the High Court stream, all questioning falls under strict legal oversight. Intelligence officers can no longer conduct extended iterative debriefing cycles. The ability to perform sequential exploitation, tactical follow-up questioning and time-sensitive interrogation diminishes sharply.
The central problem is this: The state is treating Manjang as a criminal defendant first and an intelligence asset second. The correct order is the reverse.
A former Jungler carries historical and operational intelligence:
·          hierarchy of the kill chain;
·          command authority behind each operation;
·          identities of remaining fugitives;
·          burial sites;
·          weapons sourcing;
·          internal communications;
·          foreign facilitators;
·          escape routes and safe havens.
None of this becomes available through a courtroom process. It becomes available through professionally executed exploitation. This requires layered interrogation, psychological erosion, cross-referencing, timeline-mapping, HUMINT (human intelligence) triangulation and continual re-interviewing until saturation is reached.
All efforts should have been focused on extracting information that leads to the remaining Junglers who are still at large. This is standard practice for any intelligence service managing a high-value detainee. The priority is always to break open the network, not simply to place one operative in the dock for public consumption.
How MI6, CIA and the KGB would have handled a detainee like Sanna Manjang
MI6, the CIA and the former KGB handled high-value detainees under a common doctrine: You exploit before you prosecute. Their methodology rested on three principles.
1. Total control of the detainee environment.
They isolate the subject from all external influence. No lawyers, no public hearings, no early exposure to courts. This allows interrogators to shape psychological conditions and prevent the subject from adopting defensive legal strategies.
2. Exhaustive extraction before formal charges.
MI6 used this method with Soviet defectors. The CIA still uses it for captured insurgents. The KGB perfected it with captured dissidents. They collect everything before the state takes public action: names, routes, caches, funding, communications, accomplices and operational doctrine.
3. Preventing the legal system from becoming the subject’s shield.
Once a detainee is in the dock, he gains procedural rights, the right to counsel, the right to silence and the ability to delay or obstruct questioning. A lawyer becomes a barrier between the operative and the intelligence teams.
Had The Gambia applied this doctrine, Sana Manjang would have been forced to unearth intelligence voluntarily or under pressure long before any magistrate asked what language he spoke. The remaining Junglers could have been traced, surveillance operations launched, and decades-old operational secrets exposed before the legal phase even began.
Instead, the state has allowed him to reach a point where he can simply wait for a lawyer and adopt silence as a strategy. Once he lawyers up, exploitation becomes nearly impossible.
The Magistrate’s Court was never the correct venue
The speed with which authorities placed him before a magistrate raises its own concerns. A magistrate’s court has no jurisdiction over murder, no operational infrastructure for handling high-value detainees and no security framework for conducting even the simplest classified submissions. Bringing a suspect of this scale to a venue so limited only confirms that the state processed him as an ordinary criminal rather than a strategic asset.
It also gave the public the impression of action while offering intelligence officers nothing.
Conclusion
Without full exploitation, The Gambia risks securing a single prosecution but losing the opportunity to dismantle the broader architecture of violence that operated under the former regime.
The legal victory now risks becoming an intelligence loss. The question facing The Gambia is not whether Sana Manjang has been charged. It is whether the window to extract his intelligence value is closing or has already closed.
If the state does not urgently convene a multi-agency exploitation unit with unrestricted operational access, the remaining Junglers will remain unlocated, unmonitored and potentially unreachable. Arresting one man without dismantling his network is a symbolic gesture, not an intelligence success.
The country has taken him to the dock. The real question is whether it will take everything out of him before the system locks him away for good.
