Gambia executes nine death row prisoners: Amnesty

Jammeh: had vowed to carry out all death sentences.

Gambia’s opposition leader Ousainou Darboe has called for international sanctions against President Yahya Jammeh if reports that he has begun executing death row prisoners prove true.
“It’s time for the international community to take measures that will make Jammeh conform with accepted international standards,” United Democratic Party chief Darboe told AFP.
Former colonial power Britain also expressed concern at the reports, which the Gambian government has not confirmed but said that death row prisoners had exhausted their rights of appeal.
Amnesty International said on Friday that nine prisoners had been executed, less than a week after Jammeh pledged to hang all those on death row, estimated to number at least 47, by the middle of September.
According to Amnesty, those executed on Thursday night included one woman and two Senegalese citizens.
The hangings were reported to have taken place only a day after the African Union sent a special envoy to plead with Jammeh not to carry out his threat.
“I have never throughout my career as a politician asked the international community to take any hard measures against the Gambia, but I want to appeal to the international community, that if Jammeh carries out the executions, it should order a travel ban for him and all his ministers,” Darboe said.
He said Jammeh should be “thinking about how to secure food for Gambians, providing them with healthcare, better education and how to improve the living standard of the people rather than telling them he is going to execute people”.
Amnesty International said that it had “received credible reports that nine persons were executed last night in Gambia and that more persons are under threat of imminent executions today and in the coming days”.
A Gambian security source told AFP that all death row prisoners had been “transferred to one place” late on Thursday but he and other sources could not confirm the executions.
However the security source said: “The man is determined to execute the prisoners and he will do so,” referring to Jammeh.
In a televised address on Sunday to mark the Muslim feast of Eid al-Fitr, Jammeh said: “By the middle of next month, all the death sentences would have been carried out to the letter.
“There is no way my government will allow 99% of the population to be held to ransom by criminals.”
“All those guilty of serious crimes and (who) are condemned will face the full force of the law. All punishments prescribed by law will be maintained in the country to ensure that criminals get what they deserve,” Jammeh said.
He added that crimes like banditry, drug trafficking or illicit use, homosexuality, murder, terrorism and other subversive activities against either the state or the people would not be tolerated.
Alistair Burt, a British deputy foreign minister, said in a statement yesterday: “I am deeply concerned over reports that nine prisoners on death row in the Gambia have been executed following comments by President Jammeh that all death row prisoners would now be executed.”
“I urge the Gambian authorities to halt any further executions. The UK government opposes all use of the death penalty as a matter of principle.”
Burt said that Gambia had not carried out any executions since 1981, while Amnesty said the last one officially reported was in 1985.
However, Gambian sources have told AFP that people were still being hanged secretly up until 2007.
Jammeh, a former military officer who seized power in a 1994 coup, brooks no dissent in a country often blasted by rights bodies for abuses.
Many top officials have found themselves charged with treason, including the former army and intelligence chiefs and the ex-deputy head of the police force sentenced to death last year, for alleged coup plots.
Amnesty urged Gambian authorities to “immediately halt any further possible executions”.
The president’s office said in a statement late on Friday that those on death row “have exhausted all their legal rights of appeal as provided by the law”.
It added: “The general public is hereby warned that the peace and the stability of the Gambia ... must at all costs be preserved and jealously guarded.”
Jammeh won a fourth term in office in November 2011 with 72% of the vote, according to official results, with 17% to Darboe and 11% to a third candidate, Hamat Bah.
The opposition boycotted parliamentary elections in March which saw Gambia’s ruling party win 43 of 48 seats.