DENVER (CN) — A U.S. jury on Tuesday found a former Jungler guilty on six torture-related charges for acts carried out under The Gambia’s former president in 2006 following a failed coup.
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 believed to have organized the attempted takeover. One enforcer, the defendant Michael Sang Correa, faced five counts of torture and one count of conspiracy in the U.S., where he was detained in 2019 for overstaying a visa.
Throughout the trial, the four living victims journeyed to the U.S. to testify about the atrocities they said Correa inflicted on their bodies. A former bodyguard to Jammeh, Pierre Mendy died in 2021.
Pharing Sanyang, who served in the Gambian Armed Forces and protected the statehouse as commander, showed the jury the scars he said came from being beaten with fresh banana branches and recalled the numerous surgeries he underwent to remove sand from his eyes.
A veteran of the U.S. Navy, Tamsir Jasseh told the jury he obtained U.S. citizenship before returning to The Gambia with the hope of helping to reform his local police department. After he helped the coup’s real architect escape, Colonel Ndure Cham, the Junglers arrested Jasseh. During one beating, Jasseh testified, Correa tied a plastic bag around Jasseh’s head, blocking him from breathing until he bit through the material.
Following the torture and a trial, Jasseh was convicted of treason by the Gambian court and sentenced to 20 years of hard labor. At the urging of American activist Reverend Jesse Jackson, however, Jammeh released Jasseh in 2012, allowing him to return to the U.S.
To obtain confessions, prosecutors said Correa also electrocuted victims, burned cigarettes on their skin, poured molten plastic on their legs and dropped them in bags.
With a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison per charge, Correa faced a potential sentence of 240 years.
It is rare for a non-U.S. citizen to be prosecuted in the U.S. for crimes that occurred outside the nation’s borders. However, under the international law of “universal jurisdiction,” The Gambia, several human rights groups and a handful of U.S. senators petitioned the U.S. Department of Justice to take up the case in 2020.
According to the Center for Justice and Accountability, one other Jungler faced prosecution abroad and was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of crimes against humanity by a German court in 2023. Following a Swiss trial last year, The Gambia’s former interior minister was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Correa’s defense attorneys did not deny that he committed acts of torture, but said he did so under orders from his country’s president.
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.
