(MFWA/IFEX) – On 21 February 2007, for the first time during the eight-month disappearance of Chief Ebrima Manneh, a reporter of the pro-government Banjul-based newspaper “Daily Observer”, the Gambia Police Force officially denied ever arresting him. Reacting to MFWA’s continuous demands for the release of Manneh, the most recent of which was published in “The […]
(MFWA/IFEX) – On 21 February 2007, for the first time during the eight-month disappearance of Chief Ebrima Manneh, a reporter of the pro-government Banjul-based newspaper “Daily Observer”, the Gambia Police Force officially denied ever arresting him.
Reacting to MFWA’s continuous demands for the release of Manneh, the most recent of which was published in “The Point”, the only remaining independent newspaper in the country, Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Ebrima Bah said, “As far as the Gambia Police Force is concerned, Chief Ebrima Manneh was not detained at any station.”
ASP Bah also dismissed the possibility of Manneh being held in Fatoto and “therefore that part of the story is untrue”.
Also, for the first time, the Gambian police expressed interest in Manneh’s case by urging the general public to furnish it with any “relevant” information about him.
According to MFWA sources, two plainclothes agents of the notoriously feared National Intelligence Agency (NIA) arrested Manneh on the premises of the “Daily Observer” on 11 July 2006.
Manneh’s arrest took place just a week after the African Union (AU) Heads of State summit in Banjul, when he was alleged to have passed on “damaging” information to a foreign journalist.
MFWA sources indicated that after his arrest, Manneh was detained variously at the NIA Headquarters, Mile Two Central Prisons, Kartong Police Station, Sibanor Police Station, Kuntaur Police Station and then at Fatoto Police Station, where he was spotted after spending 188 days incommunicado.
