By Fatou Saho
The Solicitor General, Hussein Thomasi, last week announced that the government will present a memorandum on the Special Tribunal at the next Ecowas heads of state summit in December.
He made this disclosure on Friday at a stakeholder forum on the Special Accountability Mechanisms for the Gambia. The process details government’s efforts to establish the mechanisms in response to the recommendations of the TRRC.
“Sections 19 and 20 of the White Paper, calls for the establishment of a Special Accountability Mechanism which includes a Special Prosecution Office, Special Criminal Division of the High Court and a Special Tribunal to investigate and adjudicate the human rights violations recommended by the truth commission for prosecution,” SG Thomasi said.
This commitment, he added, clearly demonstrates government’s commitment to honoring voices of the victims and affected communities while addressing human rights violations that were committed by the Jammeh administration.
On October 2022, the government proposed a partnership with the Ecowas Commission to establish a Special Tribunal to prosecute crimes committed by the Jammeh administration from 1994 to 2017.
Following the minister of justice’s meeting with Ecowas Commission President and subsequent approval of the Draft Statute and Decision for the Special Tribunal in July 2024, the Ecowas Parliament rejected the commission’s involvement in the process.
Commenting on this, Precilia Yagu Seesay, a member of the Ecowas-Gambia joint committee on the establishment of the hybrid court, said: “What they had at that point in time, was not rejection but rather an unfavourable opinion.”
The special advisor on transitional justice, Ms Ida Persson, also emphasised that Ecowas did not reject Gambia’s request, adding, “they did not even consider our request because it didn’t make it there because there were procedures and something called the mediation and security council that sets the agenda for the heads of state to consider whether to approve or reject. So it was at the mediation and security council that the memo on the Gambia did not pass through”.
She noted that in order for the Gambia to get a special tribunal, which is an internationalised court, the government ‘must’ enter into an agreement with an international organisation.
