Officer talks of detention during Jammeh's rule

Описание: (24 Jan 2017) Omar Malleh Jabang is one of hundreds of Gambians who disappeared during defeated leader Yahya Jammeh's rule.
Jabang, who knew Jammeh as a young man and once served as his protocol officer, later became a strong supporter of an independent candidate and, ultimately, of the coalition that backed Adama Barrow for the presidency.
In November, Jabang says he was taken by four men in a pickup truck with tinted windows to a house where he was thrown into a tiny room with planks that covered the window.
He shook as he recalled his imprisonment.
He was never told why he was arrested, though it did not come as a surprise, he said.
At one point, he said, his captors wanted to take off his handcuffs, but they wouldn't open.
"So they cracked a joke to say they are going to cut my hands to take it off," he said.
Jabang managed to respond: "Oh that's fine, cutting my hands would be quicker."
It was at that moment, when his captors laughed, that he knew he had a chance to survive.
Later, detained at the National Intelligence Agency headquarters, he found his interrogators were as curious as he was about the upcoming presidential election and the opposition coalition's chances.
The men who detained him worked for the Jungulars, Jammeh's notorious personal military of some 50 officers, who reportedly went into exile with him in Equatorial Guinea.
While Jabang wasn't tortured during his time at the prison, he teared up recalling the young boy he said shared a cell with him, describing he arrived brutally beaten and crying for his life.
Jabang, like many Gambians, is confident that his country will change under its new leader.
Democratic institutions will be put in place, the constitution will be reformed to defend people's freedoms and the security forces will be reformed.
He and his countrymen are now searching for the others who disappeared during Jammeh's long rule.
Some, they fear, might be dead.

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