By Lamin Cham & Omar Bah
The State Intelligence Services, SIS, has reached out to the leadership of the United Democratic Party to assure them that they did not plan any operation with intent to cause any trouble at the party’s foundation stone laying in Sanyang.
The SIS made the move after the UDP leader Ousainu Darboe alleged at a meeting with some elders that the State Intelligence Services had conceived a plan to instigate violence at his party’s event in Sanyang to try to drag the party into legal trouble.
“We have accessed dependable information of the SIS’s plan to invade our event with the aim of causing confusion and violence. The plan involves having one Mr Jammeh wear a President Adama Barrow T-shirt with an NPP flag to invade the UDP’s meeting on a motorcycle. But if that happens, he will be buried that day,” Darboe told a group of Imams on Friday.
He continued: “They are planning their bad deeds and in fact what I have just said is just the tip of the ice-bag of the evil things they are planning against the UDP. As time goes on, I will be exposing them, including what they planned to do to some of our lawmakers, mayors and our party leaders. But their evil intentions will not succeed because any door you knock in this country – even Adama Barrow’s cabinet we have our people there and whatever is planned against us, they will tell us. Ousman Sowe, the director of SIS, there is nothing you can do with your people at Marina Parade that we will not know of. The good sons of this country who are there will expose your evil intentions”.
The UDP leader further alleged that one Mr Jammeh, who works for a security company owned by the deputy CDS and lives in Sanyang, also an NPP supporter, is the one planned to invade his crowd but he said others such as Edrissa Sanyang of SIS, Lamin Fatty and one Mr Sallah are the ones planning the operation.
“All these are a plot to stop me from contesting the next election – they just want something to happen so that they can get me to prison but they should realise that, if I ever go back, they too will find me there. But all this is happening because the security sector reform has not been done rightly – if the SSR has been done rightly those identified as dead-woods would not have been serving our security forces by now,” Darboe said.
However, in a statement shared with The Standard, the SIS director Ousman Sowe explained:
“Thank you Standard Newspaper for reaching out to seek clarification on allegation made against the SIS by the respectable UDP leader.
In response to the allegation, please allow me to categorically state that the SIS did not plan any operation with intent to provoke, stir or cause any trouble at the foundation stone laying for UDP political bureau in Sanyang as alleged.
We wish to inform that upon analysing the said allegations on Friday night, we immediately through our channels to UDP leader reached out to assure him that the SIS have no plans to disrupt or interfere with the Sanyany event.
I want on to urge that if ever the UDP sees or senses something suspicious let them contact the SIS.
