By: Nyima Sillah
Essa Jallow, Former TRRC Communications Officer, has said the implementation of the TRRC report is going to be a long process knowing that legal issues don’t take short periods.
Jallow said “if you look at the setting of the court, the setting up an investigation wing of the court, and also what the Justice Minister has said is that some of the investigations that are conducted by the TRRC may not be admissible at the court.
“Or may not be the right way that they are supposed to be able to use those evidences in the court. So that is going to be another process follow by process in getting these people to court , and them getting their lawyers and attorneys to defend them so it is going to be a very long process,” he explained.
However, Mr Jallow also described the acceptance of the report as a giant step. Adding that the CSOs were asking them for a full implementation of the report, now they have not done the full one but they actually satisfied the CSOs and the victims per say. And that they rejected the proposal to grant Sanna Sabally amnesty and also accepted to implement most of the recommendations of the TRRC.
Meanwhile, he said: “what I understood about the granting of amnesty to Sanna Sabally was not necessary his cooperation because Sanna would be difficult to trial on crimes against humanity, because the act came after 1994 so the law cannot be active on that but properly, he might be trial on murder of all the individuals that were killed.
“So, it’s as if those early victims of the Yahya Jammeh regime were looking for justice for the killing of their family members and that pressure paid off with government deciding to reject the amnesty of Sanna,” he added.
According to him, he is not a lawyer but based on the conversations he heard, the law that would trial people for crime against humanity came after November 1994, so it cannot be brought back for him to be trial for him to be trial against humanity.
“If he were to be trial, if he were guilty as accuse of crimes against humanity, he cannot be amnestied because crimes against humanity cannot be amnestied, tortured cannot be amnestied so because that didn’t fall within that period so that was the reason why he was granted foe amnesty,” he said.
