Gambian man convicted by US jury for role in torture program

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By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A man who was accused of being part of a Gambian armed unit run by former dictator Yahya Jammeh has been convicted in the United States for torture, the Justice Department said on Tuesday.

A Colorado jury convicted the Gambian national, Michael Sang Correa, for his participation in the torture of numerous victims in The Gambia in 2006, including through beating and flesh burning, because of the victims’ purported involvement in a coup plot against the then-president, the Justice Department added.

The case marked the first known time that someone faced criminal prosecution over the role of the feared armed group known as “the Junglers” in Gambia’s police state during the rule of Jammeh, who seized power in 1994 and foiled several attempts to overthrow him before he lost an election in late 2016.

Correa was arrested in 2020 under a law which makes it a crime for anyone in the United States to commit torture abroad.

Jammeh denied torture during his rule.

The Junglers were a secretive offshoot of the Gambian army that took orders from Jammeh. Rights groups and former victims say they carried out a brutal form of justice that worsened after the failed coup.

Suspected coup plotters and other outspoken opponents of Jammeh were taken to the National Intelligence Agency near one of the capital Banjul’s white sand beaches, according to victims who spoke to Reuters.

Some found themselves in a torture chamber where they were shocked with electricity, beaten, burned with acid and smothered with plastic bags, they said.

Correa faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for each of the five torture counts and the count of conspiracy to commit torture, the Justice Department said.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Stephen Coates)