NIA Refuses To Release Assets Of Former Detainees!!!

By Musa Jobe, Our West Africa Bureau Chief In Dakar.  

The National Intelligence Agency, NIA, is yet to react to blistering criticisms that the agency is still with-holding the personal effects and other properties of people who were detained at its headquarters in Banjul for one reason or another.

Many, who have transitioned at the agency's detention centre at the old GPMB offices on Col. Muamar Ghadafi Road but subsequently released, have complained to Freedom newspaper about the agency's recalcitrance to return them their properties that were seized from them at the time of their arrests and subsequent detention. Among things that the agency stands accused of extorting from the victims of NIA detention, which was concomitant with torture and other inhumane treatments, include money, wrist watches, vehicles and valuable documents.

In a mobile phone interview with our West Africa Bureau Chief, one of the complainants, who was detained at the agency's headquarters shortly after the March 21 aborted attempt on the life of the Jammeh administration, lamented that since his release from detention, he'd made several futile efforts to recover his properties from the NIA but that the notorious secret service was in no mood to entertain his demand for the return of his money and other items.

' It's incomprehensible that the NIA is still withholding my money, important documents and other items even I'd been exonerated from the allegations of jeopardising national security. What is even more unfathomable is that the top-brass of the agency is in no mood to entertain my claims for my things. This is an unfortunate and an unacceptable development and it tantamounts to extortion and theft,' fumed our informant.

The pain of this former victim of the NIA detention and torture is akin to many who spoke to this medium. Many are now calling on the central government to intervene even with faint opportunity of this happening. They want the state department of interior to rise to the occasion because they are of the feeling that the continued withholding of their personal properties is a crime against them.

It would be recalled that many Gambians and non-nationals have been rounded up and detained at the NIA, especially after the March 21 botched putsch. Many have suffered prolonged detention and untold sufferings before being charged or released.

The NIA is yet to react to the allegations.