TRRC Tours Fajara Barracks, Jeshwang Prison

Commissioners and other members of the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission Tuesday visited Fajara Barracks and Jeshwang Prison as part of the commission’s fact-finding mission.

The delegation was led by the TRRC Chairman Dr. Lamin Sise. The Fajara Barracks and Jeshwang Prison have been named by TRRC witnesses as places where rights violations were allegedly committed during the regime of Yahya Jammeh.

At the Fajara Barracks, the delegation visited the Anteroom where senior officers meet to discuss operational plans, the mechanical workshop where politician O.J Jallow and co. were allegedly detained and tortured in the aftermath of the 1994 coup, and the back gate of the barracks that was used by the AFPRC military junta on 11 November 1994 to overrun the guards before allegedly killing alleged coup plotters.

Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM) Lamin Fatty, who took the delegation on the tour of the premises, said on that fateful day in 1994, soldiers on guard were overpowered by the junta forces. He told the delegation that it would have been suicidal for the guards to resist.

According to him, the plan of the junta forces was to overrun the barracks and subsequently disarm the soldiers.

“I was in the camp when the junta forces penetrated. I wasn’t far away from the Adjutant’s office when I heard firing that lasted for about fifteen minutes.”

At Jeshwang Prison, Deputy Prison Commissioner, Alagie Jobe took the delegation on a tour of the premises, including the Remand Wing and a secret detention cell outside the prison complex where well-known activists and others were detained incommunicado.