DENVER (CN) — Before a Denver jury on Thursday, a Gambian man who served a decade in the U.S. Navy recalled being tortured by Junglers following a failed coup against the West African nation’s former president in 2006.
Following the discovery of a coup plot in 2006, the Gambia’s then-president Yahya Jammeh ordered members of his special forces unit, the Junglers, to arrest and torture those who organized the attempted coup and challenged his rule. One enforcer, Michael Sang Correa, faces five counts of torture and one count of conspiracy in the U.S., where he was detained in 2019 for overstaying a visa.
One of the named victims, Tamsir Jasseh, told the jury he left The Gambia in 1986 to join the U.S. Navy and obtain a degree in criminal justice at Georgia State University in Atlanta. After serving in the U.S. military for a decade, Jasseh obtained U.S. citizenship in 1996. He returned to The Gambia in 1999 carrying sample SWAT uniforms from the Atlanta Police Department and the hope of bringing reform to his native law enforcement.
Instead of being given to police officers, the uniforms would eventually be worn by the dictatorial president’s private military unit, the Junglers, also known as the Black-Blacks.
“Dissenting speech was not tolerated, and people were very distrusting,” Jasseh said, explaining life under authoritarian Jammeh to the jury.
Jasseh said he wasn’t involved in the plotting of the 2006 coup but drove the movement’s architect, Colonel Ndure Cham, to the Senegal border to escape. Jasseh said the risk of facing the criminal charge of aiding and abetting was worth saving Cham’s life.
Soon after, however, Junglers dressed in black-black uniforms detained Jasseh and brought him to the National Intelligence Agency for interrogation.
First, Jasseh was ordered to confess his role in the coup, under the threat of being beaten. In the days after Jasseh signed the coerced confession and apologized on camera, he was taken to a courtyard and beaten with whip-like branches cut fresh from a banana tree. On one occasion, Correa placed a black plastic bag over Jasseh’s head, preventing him from breathing until he bit a hole through the material.
While some Junglers held back, Jasseh said Correa “participated overzealously” in the beatings.
Jasseh said Correa tormented him for obtaining U.S. citizenship and that Jammeh asked to hear his screams over the phone to ensure he wasn’t being let off easy.
Jasseh was sentenced to 20 years of hard labor after being convicted of treason by the Gambian court. At the urging of American activist Reverand Jesse Jackson, however, Jammeh released Jasseh in 2012, allowing him to return to the U.S. Jasseh returned to The Gambia only after Jammeh lost reelection and fled into exile in 2017.
Jasseh is one of five men Correa is charged with torturing in 2006. Another victim, Pharing Sanyang, showed the jury the scars he carries from being beaten in 2006, including cigarette burns and bayonet slashes on his left arm.
“The panel told me, ‘You must confess, or we’ll deal with you,'” Sanyang recalled. Though he told the jury he played no role in the coup, he said he confessed anyway because “I had to save my body.”
Sanyang served as a second lieutenant in the Gambian Armed Forces and, as a member of the Commander unit, protected the statehouse. Sanyang said he refused to assassinate the journalist Deyda Hydara when ordered to, and he declined to join the Junglers.
“I did not feel it was a legal cause,” Sanyang said.
Jungler Bai Lowe, who carried out the hit, was sentenced to life in prison by a German court in 2023 for Hydara’s murder. According to the Center for Justice and Accountability, a third Gambian faced trial under the principle of universal jurisdiction last year: Interior Minister Ousman Sonko, who was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison by a Swiss court.
American prosecutors additionally called Ebou Jarjue to the stand, a Gambian man who served as a waiter at the statehouse and personally taste-tested Jammeh’s food to make sure it wasn’t poisoned. After he was arrested on suspicion of trying to poison Jammeh, a crime Jargue says he did not commit, Jargue eventually fled to Senegal, where he remained until Jammeh fell from power.
Home to 2.4 million people, The Gambia follows its eponymous river through western Africa, where it borders Senegal and the Atlantic Ocean. A former British colony, The Gambia gained independence in 1965.
Jammeh held power from 1994, after leading a coup against the former President Dawda Jawara, until he lost reelection in 2016 and fled the country the following year. Throughout his tenure, U.S. prosecutors say Jammeh ruled over the country as a dictator, arresting and torturing those who opposed him while suppressing the media and other critics.
In his defense, Correa has said he was acting under orders and that if he did not carry out the beatings, he would have been subjected to the same or worse treatment.
If Correa is found guilty, each count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and restitution, adding up to a potential sentence of 240 years.
George W. Bush-appointed Senior U.S. Judge Christine Arguello is presiding over the trial at the Alfred Arraj U.S. Courthouse in downtown Denver. The trial is expected to last two weeks.