The Banjul Magistrates Court has issued a bench warrant for the arrest of former Communications Minister after prosecutors accused him of treason.
Magistrate S Conteh issued the bench warrant yesterday afternoon following the prosecution’s application for Dr Amadou Scattred Janneh who now lives in the United States to be extradited by the Interpol. “The application for bench warrant is granted. Bench warrant is hereby issued for the accused to be brought back to face the charge,” Magistrate Conteh said.
The prosecutor, Alieu Faye, in convincing the court said: “The accused is out of the jurisdiction and we are applying for a bench warrant so that the accused can be brought back by the Interpol to face the charge,” he said.
Dr Janneh, a Gambian-American citizen, is accused of distributing T-shirts bearing ‘Coalition for Change the Gambia, End to Dictatorship Now’ with intent to usurp executive powers. He was convicted to life in jail by Justice Emmanuel Nkea of the Special Criminal Division in Banjul in January 2011 for same charges now before the court. However, he was pardoned by President Yahya Jammeh together with Tamsir Jasseh, also a Gambian-American after their sentence.
Dr Janneh served as Information Minister for over a year under the Jammeh administration following his return from the US where he studied journalism and political science and later taught for over ten years as assistant professor of African and African-American Studies at the University of Tennessee, US.
Over the past weeks, he has been based in the capital of neighbouring Senegal engaged in his anti-Gambia government activities including distributing T-shirts.
Courtesy of www.standard.gm
Ends
Soh bukeh
Really this idiotic clown call Yahya Jammeh has reduced all Gambians into clowns. Police, magistrates, judges, prison wardens and all and sundry are hooked on this madness. Our grandchildren will never forgive our complicity in allowing Jammeh to destroy the Gambia. What else are Gambians waiting for to remove this man?????
Waste of scarce resources…
The regime is ridiculing itself in the eyes of the world because printing and distributing a T-shirt with no violent encryption is not an internationally recognised crime. He was not even in the country when he allegedly committed this so-called crime.
Thanks
And I will be very grateful to know if His/Her Worship Conteh was satisfied the court was competent to issue such a warrant and on what basis.
But maybe in the land of the Professor even the Judges have to irrationally follow the crooked lines. These (lack of principle and rationality) are some of the legacies that will tear the Gambia apart long after the Professor is gone.
The Gambian Bar and the Judiciary are arguably part of Professor Jammeh’s enabling machinery of terror and injustice. It would be recalled that a group of accused persons (in and around Basse) who were once literally represented by AG Jorbateh shortly before putting on his hat as Judge expressed outrage and revulsion when he presided over the same cases, convicted the same people and handed them various heafty sentences as their former lawyer. The Bar condoned this nonsense.
O, Yes, Kemo-Ba, I remember it well!!! Jobarteh is/was a DISGRACE to the Gambian Bar. Now, he is in Mile 2 Prison – with the very people he so unfairly condemned when he was a judge. Unlike other judges who seemed reluctant to condemn innocent people and were only doing so under duress, Jobarteh seemed to RELISH it all.
Quite truly there are many Gambians more wicked than monster Jammeh. How can a trained lawyer, supposedly a defender of the weak behave so unconscionably. May he rot in jail.
He will be soon. Please don’t worry.