Sam Sarr Exposed Ebriman Chongan!!

“ Chongan Calls Me A Madman In His Book,” Sarr

Essa Sey, Pa Nderry M’Bai, Lamaraa Jallow, BB Darboe, And Others Smeared By Chongan!!

AN OPEN LETTER TO EBRIMA ISMAILA CHONGAN

AUTHOR OF THE PRICE OF FREEDOM

BALANGBA OR BORIBA

My Dear Mr Ebrima Ismaila Chongan,

I am sure you have been expecting this review of your book from me, The Price Of Freedom in the outline of this letter of which some of its contents were highlighted in a couple of e-mails I sent you a fortnight ago. Honestly speaking if I hadn’t come across the statements you incorrectly made about me I probably would not have reacted to the book but just let you enjoy the praises and positive comments coming from few of your readers such as the articulate Mr. Karamba Keita and Mr. Halaki.

At any rate the issues that concern me personally are those that were I believe intentionally written to misrepresent or mischaracterize me with the objective of tarnishing my image.  Most important of all was where you wrote in Page 119, paragraph 1, thus: By mid October (1994) “almost all the detainees had already given their statements except Captain Samsideen Sarr who was sort of mentally ill as a result of the September 6^th Incident”.…..He also used to say that anybody who worked with the AFPRC gus would be equally guilty of the crimes they have committed.

 And then in the second paragraph, the same page, you went on to add this about me: One of the famous saying was the 3 “Fs’ when faced with an evil system like the AFPRC. The 3 “Fs” meant fight it, flee it or flow with it. Unfortunately after his release he flowed with it by becoming very close to Yahya Jammeh.

Well Mr. Chongan I will start with the last comment about the 3 “Fs” by putting it to you that you totally misquoted me there. You know as well as I do that just like the issue of my “mental illness” this is a subject we had gone over several times. But after reading your book and realized how forgetful you are and how well you have perfected the art of fabricating your own stories to suit your spiteful agenda, it became clear that this was just another one of your numerous but inaccurate tales strewn all over the chapters. But for once I wish to remind you that the story originated from an American 2^nd lieutenant, Tye Legaman, whom I trained with in Fort Benning, Georgia in 1986. It was during one of our very tough periods of training, with almost everyone complaining about the hostile terrain that he said it as such; “folks always remember the principles of the three “Fs” meaning when confronted with a difficult situation and you can’t fight or flee from it, you just have to relax and flow with it”.  Did you however have to write about that even if it was true unless you intended to label me as an unreliable person who doesn’t honor his words?

Instead of the AFPRC government, my remarks were made about the difficult prison conditions that were more treacherous than any kind of “repressive” government imaginable. So other than the fact that you intended to make me look bad by misinforming your readers about that old story, you also continued to drag me more downhill adding that I used to say that anybody who worked with the AFPRC guys would be equally guilty of the crimes they have committed. Naturally while we were in jail all we had wished for the AFPRC government was failure for mainly one reason; so that we could all regain our freedom and join our families again. Therefore, every one of us had something negative to say about the government. Yet it was my comment you could remember and put in your book. What about Sheriff Gomez whom you praised throughout the book as your best friend? I remember how you used to call me when he was studying in England to relay the bad things you always said came from him against me.  At one time you even said that he was in your house with Doctor Malick Njie who together spent the whole dinner session condemning me for working for Jammeh after being released from jail. And that you had defended me in every conceivable way against them. Are you sure you were telling me the truth? Apparently when both Doctor Njie and Sheriff Gomez were appointed as ministers, I asked you about what it meant in relation to that. After a while you called me and said that Gomez who was the sports minister passed by your house from the Beijing Olympics and swore to you that Jammeh gave him an option of either accepting the position or faced an eerie ramification. It could be part of your master fabrication; but what an irony that you never commented about these two’s betrayal of “the covenant” we had had at Mile Two. Or was this selective lynching of Pa Sallah Jagne and Samsudeen Sarr?

 If you were not deceitful, you would have quit masquerading behind this warrior façade claiming to have rejected everything that the Jammeh government represented. In Jail none of us had imagined working for the government again especially after we were all accused of treasonable offense. You might not admit it but when you came out of jail I approached you together with Major Kalifa Bajinka who was at the time the Aide De Camp (ADC) to President Jammeh. We had suggested and definitely convinced you to let us try finding you a job by talking to President Jammeh; you did not only agree with genuine interest but was very hopeful that we could do it. Jammeh was apprehensive about employing you for the obvious reason that you were a bully and a terrible officer; but we persuaded him to give you a chance. He then agreed to meet you at the State House where you were supposed to report at a given time. You agreed to come. But the very day you were to appear, Bajinka called me in the morning to tell me with regret that President Jammeh said he didn’t want to meet you again. We were all disappointed, and I think that was when you decided to leave the country. You have changed that story altogether. And I am today thankful to god that it never happened with my name in what would have been the disaster of the century. 

Last but not the least; let us revisit that episode of my mental illness in jail.  For a fair start, you could have let your readers know that you were not present when it happened and how you came to know about it four months later. I know that you wouldn’t tell them that I was the one who narrated the whole incident to you few days after you were brought back from confinement #1. From September 6, 1994 to January 27, the day Sabally and Hydara were detained, you, Mamat Cham and Baboucarr Jang were totally kept incommunicado and had no knowledge about what was going on in our area. But here you were in the book, talking about what happened in mid October 1994 as if you were a witness to it. Secondly, if you couldn’t mention the source of your information, giving a little bit of example over what exactly happened to show that I was mentally ill should have been added. But that is impossible too because when I  explained the story to you I took my time not only to prove to you that I was merely acting incoherently but further gave you the details of everything that happened from September 10, the day I started it to September 18, the day I called it off. You may have forgotten but I told you that I was keeping record of my actions on a daily basis, all still available with me in the tissue papers I used to smuggle to my wife. I believe I even showed those tissue papers to Dr. Sulayman Nyang at Howard University when I first arrived in the USA in 1999, although we never had the time to review their contents. If you were present at the time, I would have simply asked you to tell me what had happened during my period of mental illness that I was not aware of but you were.

But since this is a matter of defending my reputation I will once again walk you through the incident in the way I did many times in the past. This time however, it is not to convince you about the fact that I was merely acting but to provide the evidence to anyone interested that your story was another calculated invention aimed at undermining my reputation. By the way can you remember the first story published by Lamarana Barry in the Freedom newspaper when the author said the same things about my madness in jail? He had after praising you for being the only officer in the entire Gambia armed forces who courageously attempted to “crush” the coup, reported that Mr. Bakary Darbo-a person I hardly knew-did connive with me during the 1994 coup to convince the Senegalese government not to allow Guinean troops en-route to crush the coup and restore the PPP government to use their air space.  I was accused of having a direct hand in the death of Yaya Drammeh, the Gambian-Liberian mercenaries who along with his colleagues attacked Farafenni Barracks in 1996 and year later died in prison. With Mr. Bakary Darbo, I believe everything I know about him came from you lately.  You even told me about the family ceremony he recently had and made you the guest of honor; didn’t you give him a ride last month together with his friend Mr. Ablie Boding in your private car, a luxury they can no longer afford as former PPP heavyweights, and that they spent the entire journey bad-mouthing Lamin Darbo for tolerating his father’s decision to join the “Kombo Darbo elders” who “shamelessly” visited President Jammeh at state house just to praise him for his wonderful governance? (That GRTS footage is still viewable on raaki.com/grts, a great website for that matter). Was it not the same Lamin Darbo you said was secretly planning to quit his security-guard work and return home in 2011, no matter whether President Jammeh won the election or not? I thought you were planning to attack him online about that issue since January. What’s holding you still? Boy it feels good to give you a taste of your own bitter medicine. Only that my dose is purer than your, if you understand what I am alluding to. May be all the story about Bakary Darbo and others in England are as usual fabricated. You sound very sick buddy.

As soon as that article was published, a person who knows you well called me and told me that Lamarana an unfamiliar name online who suddenly surfaced from nowhere was nobody other than your orderly before the coup. For days you wouldn’t take my calls or respond to my e-mails until I published a rejoinder quoting the message and your possible involvement. Barely fifteen minutes after The Freedom paper published it you gave me a call to say that you had traveled to a location in Europe, Brussels to be more precise, where phones and computers were inaccessible, and was the reason why I couldn’t get you. It was all baloney! Amazingly you had sworn that the name of Lamarana was new to you and was never your orderly or anyone you knew in the Gambia security forces. The whole attack, you argued was orchestrated by Essa Sey and Pa Nderry. But instead of writing to defend your position you offered to try and reach Essa Sey whom you have cast away since he betrayed you in Senegal. Now imagine how I felt when I read this in your book, page 78, and paragraph 2: ………..I immediately departed for the Bridge with my driver Lance Corporal Dembo Jatta and my orderly Lamin Jammeh who had replaced my previous orderly Corporal Lama Barry. ……… By this very assertion alone, it was enough to convince me that you were not at all telling me the truth about

Apart from lying about it you went on to accuse Essa and Pa Nderry for the attack. You alleged that Essa in particular played a great role to what ultimately caused the Senegalese government to now mistrusts Gambian dissidents seeking assistance from them. Can you remember saying that Essa Sey in 1996 deceived you by providing you with forged-confidential documents that he said were classified Gambia government records he had stolen while an ambassador revealing how President Jammeh was clandestinely undermining the Wadda government to the point of almost destabilizing Senegal? You even had to pay for his air ticket to accompany you all the way to Senegal to deliver the documents to President Ablie Wadda which he in turn confronted Jammeh about culminating in the arrest and detention of Halifa Sallah, Omar Jallow (OJ) and Hamat Bah. Apparenly the documents were submitted through a third party called Asis who forwarded them as if they originated from the opposition-party leaders arrested. Both of us knew what happened next; President Obasanjo of Nigeria had to intervene for the freedom of the imlicated politician. For that reason you said Essa will never deceive you again. Or was that another habitual fabrication against Essa Sey in the wake of the Lama Barry charade?    

Excuse me, but that is what I found very interesting in your writing as well. When you are excited and wanted to blow your trumpet, you could say or write about anything without giving it a second thought; but sooner or later in an attempt straighten out your own mess you come up with points totally contradictory to your previous beliefs or assertions. That’s how forensic scientists trace the footprints of criminals who in their best moments of committing crimes they always inadvertently leave a trail of incriminating evidences that blow their cover because of naked stupidity. As we dissect your book I will be pointing out these repeated flaws that virtually controlled your thought process. 

Back to the subject of my madness in jail, I hope we are now on the same frequency over the fact that all you knew about it was hearsay, if you don’t want to admit that you heard it from me or read something about it in my book published four years before yours.  So once again I will start from where you stopped in your narrative of what happened that night some of which were covered in my book.

 The torturers came back from Confinement area #1 and Edward Singhateh requested Antu Saidy to unlock Captain Sonko’s cell door after which he walked in and viciously slapped the captain in the face three times. From Captain Sonko, Singhateh again placed the muzzle of his rifle on Lt. Sheriff Gomeze’s door taking a direct aim at his face, clicking the safety catch from safe to firing mechanism, up and down respectively. He teased Gomez to dare say something since his ‘father’ Colonel Audu; his Nigerian commander was no longer around him. At last Yankuba had to nervously prevail on Singhateh who was very intoxicated with alcohol to be mindful before accidentally firing. He turned around and snarled at Touray for trying to tell him what to do. But both sabally and Hydara as well coaxed him to stop. At last he reluctantly lowered down the rifle and walked out. I was in cell #1, Captain Sonko in #2 and Sheriff Gomez in #3. When they were leaving I heard Yankuba Touray warning me while laughing to stand by for my turn the following night. I didn’t know whether that was a calculated gesture to put us at ease or not but it meant a lot in reassuring me that nobody was killed after all. People who had never killed in their lives cannot kill people for the first time or witness the act and within minutes start to laugh over and make fun of it.

There was also another soldier who served in my platoon at Kartong during the confederation who discreetly walked around whispering to everyone he could, including Lt. Gomez that the whole exercise was only to scare us, and that nobody was killed. In my mind therefore, I had concluded that Touray, Hydara and perhaps Sabally were there only to scare us; but as for Singhateh, we had long before the incident learnt that he was persistently campaigning for a consensus among the council members to have all detainees executed. Captain Alagie Kanteh who before his arrest and detention had served as the first spokesman of the military government told it to us. He said it was Captain Valentine Strasser of Sierra Leone who advised Singhateh during his first official visit to Sierra Leone few weeks after the coup not to waste time and resources by keeping us in jail indefinitely. They had to execute all of us in the same way he did to all Sierra Leonean senior officers he detained after seizing power in 1992. We all believed in Kanteh’s information, and I couldn’t think about any reason why he had to lie about that. He was apparently a witness at the council meeting the day Singhateh launched his final attempt for approval to execute all detainees until Jammeh strictly warned him never to ever mention that to him or else risked joining us at Mile Two Prisons. After all, we were all aware of how Strasser who seized power at the age of twenty-five, being the youngest military leader ever in Africa was Singhateh’s role model. Did you think that it was a coincident for the Gambia’s military council AFPRC to sound the same as Sierra Leone’s NPRC? That was all Singhateh earlier in full control of a lot of matters. So I was more concerned about him than anyone else.

The following day was marked by tight security all over the place just like you wrote it as a fact you got from Sheriff Gomez.All those privileges of leaving our cells from early morning to lunch time and from 2.00 pm to 5.00pm were seized. Even the smokers were denied cigarettes to smoke. We were once again hastily escorted one after another at gunpoint to go to the birth room to empty and clean our toilet pans, refilled our water containers and back to our cells once a day. That night I went to bed fully padded up with multiple layers of clothing in preparation for any beating and dragging I may be subjected to like what happened to you. From the sound of your screaming and begging for mercy that night there was no doubt that the beating they gave you was severe and the dragging painful. I also stuffed my tooth brush, paste and few biscuits under my pants. It was a hot tense night but I endured it, expecting them throughout. Thank god they failed to appear.

The following day 8^th September, I decided on the plan to act frightened with a semi-hunger strike, the exact way you wrote it quoting Lt. Sheriff Gomez as your source. Ironic! I was to start it on the 10^th which was a Saturday. I knew that with the help of god, if I could successfully pull it off, they may spare us another visit. Another visit, I was afraid, might have provided Singhateh with the opportunity to kill someone deliberately and call it an accident which will give him the justification to eliminate all of us. On September 9^th, I went to bed rehearsing some of the actions I was going to take the next day. I decided that it was necessary to take a towel to cover my head and face throughout the period; in that case my facial expressions would hardly be noticed which I thought could compromise my pretence. In short, I started the acting from the 10th to the 18^th of September. At first it was difficult to hit the proper actions for some of the prison officers to take me seriously. On the other hand all the detainees immediately seemed to believe that there was something wrong with me. That was when the excitement commenced. Lt. Sheriff Gomez was the most vocal and started to denounce the guards for being inhumane. Twenty-four hours later, Sunday morning, 11^th September, the pressure on the guards to take my case seriously increased dramatically. Cpl Suso was the first guard to admit that something was wrong with me. The tight security enforced since the 6^th began to relax with every detainee demanding to be unlocked to come and see me. When Sergeant Sabally saw my condition and started to cry Sergeant Bojang, a strict officer yelled at him to shut up or be permanently locked up. By 9.00 am, they brought breakfast and Sergeant Sabally mistakenly poured a tin of Nescaffe in the bucket of tea. That angered Sheriff Gomez who wouldn’t drink coffee at all. So you see Mr. Chongan, like I told you before the tight security started to ease down for the better because of me. I guess you couldn’t remember that.

However that same morning of the 11^th of September the police came to take statement from all of us. To name a few Lt. Gomez was charged with counter-coup offense, Musa Manneh with enabling the escape of President Jawara and Farba Sabally with stealing. They were all devastated with Gomez complaining about whether they will face fair trial.  All this time I was quiet but memorizing everything for my journal updated when everybody had gone to bed at night.

Incidentally Musa Manneh’s paralysis did not happen then as you wrote in your book but until after the November 11, counter coup. As far as I was concerned, there was nothing wrong with him. Almost every major sickness that affected the detainees had to do with faking it for sympathy. It has always been a jailhouse prank, the reason why I stopped short of narrating the entire details in my book, but only stopped at mentioning that there was nothing wrong with me. And since you were the first to read my book, you could have referred your readers to my version of the story there if you hadn’t meant to be deceitful and offensive.  

However, when it was my turn to go for my statement, regardless of everyone pleading with APO Thomas to exempt me until I recovered he insisted on forcing me to go. He was positive that I was just acting saying that the late Alieu Sallah who was sentenced to death during the 1981 coup had pretended to be paralyzed in the same way only to recover fully after being pardoned and released on humanitarian grounds.

 I could anyway observe from APO Thomas’s behavior that he was going to use force with three of his toughest men standing by if I had resisted. I didn’t want any of that. I halfheartedly complied, moving in slow motion until I arrived at the conference room where the police were waiting. Gonel Bah was the head of the police team who happened to know me very well. We came from the same street in SereKunda with his younger brothers Edrisa Bah (Dubi) and Amadou Bah (Chaka) being my best childhood friend from infancy to adulthood.  So Gonel knew me better than anyone there and was quick to establish that with APO Thomas. He demanded that I should put my towel away and look at him in the face. It was really embarrassing. I had never expected things to develop so rapidly much more to deal with a person so close to my home and family in that state. But I knew that it was a life and death issue. He asked me to identify him and I called him Alhagie. He started talking about my mother saying that he saw her that morning and I replied but only talked about my father who died in 1985. Finally he officially declared me incommunicative and registered his verbal disappointment with me for breaking under pressure as if I was not a true soldier. Mr. Chongan, Gonel Bah is still in the Gambia, retired from the police force long ago.  I am sure he will confirm all that if questioned about it.   

When I returned to my cell that day, to my satisfaction, for the first time all the prison officers including Thomas began to take me seriously. Antou Saidy the boss said he wanted to take me to the hospital but Sana Sabally and Sadibu Hydara wouldn’t condone any of that on their watch. Captain Alagie Kanteh was genuinely sympathetic frequently visiting me in his black shorts and urging me to stay strong for my kids and children. Lieutenants Sonko of the presidential guard and Yankuba Drammeh were the only two who never came into my cell throughout. Captain Cambi would bring me two biscuits and Jaffa Juice everyday that I obviously avoided eating except for one day when I was sure I could eat it without anybody noticing. By the fourth day they started to listen to Lt. Kebba Dibba who continued to swear to his creator that I had seen a demon in cell #1 and needed to be transferred to another cell ASP.  With nothing working and Doctor Malick Njie the only medical doctor detained kept on coming up with all sorts of prognoses and clinical jargons about what was irreversibly wrong with me, Dibba’s theory-typically Gambian-that an invisible devil in the neighborhood suddenly appeared before me began to make sense. In the end even Doctor Njie agreed to Dibba’s theory who perhaps like everyone thought that an SOB “Jinneh Musa”, would appear when everybody was asleep at night and engage me on some “Jalbijalan”, or hide and seek game. You know how we take those things at home. So you see Mr. Chongan like I told you many times before, to Kebba Dibba it was a demon but in your book it was all cowardice. Aren’t that funny?  Soon after however, Thomas, Colley and Saidy the three most senior officers agreed to transfer me to cell # 4 where RSM Jeng had occupied before he was tortured and taken away with you on the 6^th. But before the transfer was done Lt. Dibba was allowed to perform his ritual on me by reciting verses in the Quran and repeatedly spitting on my head. It was gross. Up to this day Dibba who was never among those I had later confided to about the prank believe that he is the one who exorcised the demon out of me through his magical powers. If you could get in touch with Major Bajinka, he probably would have been able to tell you that I did narrate this whole story to him in a similar way I told it to you in the past which he indeed found very funny. You may be surprise to know that I have been discussing it with every close family member and associate of mine including Dennis Coker, Momodou Camara in the USA and many others. But instead of trying to use it to smear my name for nothing only being malicious, they only enjoyed the fascination and fun in it but perfectly identified with the circumstances that necessitated it. It has always been a jailhouse survival mechanism especially to those detained indefinitely like in our case where worse still, we everyday faced the risk of being executed.

 I am not sure whether I ever confided to Captain Kanteh; but I certainly did not to, Cambi, Mamat Cham, Alieu Ndure, Yankuba Drammeh and his friend Lt. Sonko, Captain Sonko or Wilson and few others. But Captain James Johnson, Lt. Sheriff Gomez, Major Sheriff Mbye, IGP Pa Sallah Jagnes and Doctor Maick Njie were definitely all momentarily briefed. It’s not reflected in my notes but I think I also confided to Captain Kanteh.

Gomez and Johnson were the first I spoke to on the 18^th of September and begged them not to talk about it to everybody. That was after Captain Ndure accompanied me to the bathroom to have my first serious shower in days. Factors that compelled me to call it off included the depletion of my insect repellant cream I needed every night against the mosquitoes, shortage of my hidden biscuits and of course being sure that the looming danger that warranted the action was finally gone.  

As for Captain James Johnson he had always displayed signs as if he knew that it was a hoax. He would everyday come close to my ear and whispered, “Just hold it there pal”. And when I asked him that day whether he knew he replied in the affirmative.

A couple of weeks after, I requested for the investigating police team to come for my statement. They came and took it without Gonel Bah this time. So contrary to what you wrote in your book that my statement was never taken and that I never went to the panel, my statement was taken and I actually went to the panel; The Imam may be old to be involved in such petty things, but Jatta Baldeh and I guess Mr. Marong are reachable for verification. In my book I explained that encounter. Sometimes I wonder whether you even read my book.

 I went to the panel well before mid October. One more thing, you probably didn’t know but the Imam of Latri Kunda Dodou Drammeh is my blood uncle. As a result, I found your negative statements about him rather offensive. The man is a god-fearing Muslim with exemplary character who was genuinely compassionate to our plight. To categorize him as a co-conspirator to the regime’s harsh policies, was, at best a disingenuous statement and a very unfair characterization of a humble religious leader. What did you expect of the man? You expected him go to independence stadium on a national crusade to denounce the government because Samsudeen Sarr and Ebrima Chongan were illegally arrested and detained in a coup that he understood nothing about?

Mamat Cham’s father was an ordinary illiterate with no knowledge of the law or government policies, the late Lieutenant Saye’s father more or less the same, but when their sons were in trouble they had the courage and guts to at least question the government’s reason for their plights.  You wrote a lot of overblown stuff about your father, the “elite veteran” military and police officer in the Gambia until his retirement as the third in command in the Gambia police force; yet according to your story not for once did you mention an effort he had taken to secure your release or any of us for that matter. If there was anybody who could have made a difference in our desperate situation I believe someone of his “sophistication” with a broader understanding of the legal system should have been the one and not an imam who perhaps never saw you in his mosque for prayers or to offer charity.

I think Mr. Karamba Touray’s kindness to you by giving you that fantastic first review where he showered you with praise for the publication of the book borders on flattery. Karamba is a cool brother with a credible reputation and sharp intellect whose opinion about literary matters are often acknowledged with genuine appreciation. However in the case of your book, I will humbly beg to differ with him for praising a work that by all honesty deserved to be rated below average in substance and content. It’s hard to believe that after about thirteen years of writing this book, this is what you have to show for it. How you could ignore or failed to notice the numerous errors, awkward wordings, hyperboles, general sloppiness and above all contradictions spotted all over the book is beyond my faculties.  In fact comparing the dissimilarity in the quality of the language used in some areas where sometimes it looked as if an elementary-school student was learning how to write simple essays to other areas that seemed to be the work of a seasoned writer analyzing complex contemporary politics, I couldn’t but conclude that with plagiarism tentatively ruled out, your book was possibly written by two different writers with vast aptitude disparity in their mastery of the English Language. Well after telling me that Mr. Halaki is a broke freeloader who takes money from you like a street beggar, I dismissed his praises of your book as an arm twisting for more handouts.

This paragraph however was extracted word for word from page 65 where you tried to explain why the army was disproportionally better armed than the Gendarmerie a command hitch that had a direct effect to the success of the military coup. The understanding from our end, we in the Gendarmerie were that the arms and ammunitions were going to be divided between the army and the Gendarmerie equally. This would have created a checkmate situation in the GNA or the Gendarmerie would think twice before making any attempt on the government, as was the case in Senegal. Unfortunately, Colonel Njie was against this idea for whatever reasons, he probably knows but its generally normal for the Commander to get the best deal for his force albeit he was the most senior Gambian security personnel should he not be above inter-service jealousy or rivalry at least for the interest of national security.  

Discounting the cumbersomeness of the idea woven in a language  too hard to determine its conclusive logic and whether you were in the end asking a question without the right punctuation or not, just compare that standard of English to the next where you discussed in page 180 paragraph 2 the political dynamics of tyrannical rule in the Gambia and the hopelessness and danger posed by the ineffective opposition force to bring about the desired change: To wit, just as predictions in politics have a general notoriety in their non-fulfilment, it is almost a universal empirical law in politics that vacuums do not always remain unfilled: one way or the other they are eventually filled. And in the current Gambian context, with its political volatility coupled with the inept leadership of the opposition in having no practical ideas on how to deal with the excesses of the Dictatorship, the vacuum is likely to spurn ‘traditional’ politics and opt for the ‘non-traditional is very likely to be ‘spontaneous’ and acephalous.  

Other than the misspelling of fulfillment and the placing of ‘a’ before cephalous a word that denotes having a particular number of heads or a particular kind of head, the theory presented, though quite fanciful, flowed linguistically flawless with an admirable intellectual depth that certainly made me wonder how such a good essayist could fail to notice the misspelling of fulfillment and cephalous.  

To buttress my assertion just go back to page 68, paragraph 1, also copied verbatim for more comparison: In early part of 1992, I return back from Turkey and subsequently on annual leave at the same time the second contingent returned back from Liberia yet replaced by a token unit less than platoon. While I was still enjoying my leave, again the soldiers mutinied again ironically the newly promoted 2^nd Lieutenant Yaya Jammeh by Major Pa Sallah Jagne even though he didn’t went to any officers school or academy was very instrument in stopping them at Denton Bridge, he was still a member of the Gambia National Gendarmerie.   Not far from that was the following awkward wording in page, 69, paragraph, 4 where you again wrote: Why did the government failed to observe all these points more so after two incidents of mutiny over conditions of service and delayed allowances of ECOMOG duties.  Now Mr.Chongan how can I wrap my mind around the fact that the same person writing so poorly with such sloppy style of punctuation was the same person writing below in page 181, paragraph 2: …… Equally to the point , because the ‘people-led’ revolt is, by definition a matter of surprise, it is strategically more sure-footed in catching the Dictatorship unawares and unprepared and leaving its apparatus of coercion ill-prepared for a disorganized but surprisingly destabilizing force (like ‘people-led’ revolt) than actions that require conspiracies, central planning and loyalties that cannot be guaranteed or taken for granted (like military putsches)-at any rate, the latter is relatively easier to detect and foil.  

Once again compare that with the next one, Page 117, paragraph 2 where you wrote from your prison journal: ……….This was a Friday and we have now returned to Security Wing No.4 with strength of 33 detainees, which had a capacity for 32 cells. In fact two people had to share one cell-Lance Corporal Bah and Lance Corporal Landing Badjie. Now there is renewed tension the stakes are really high again and the whole weekend we did not get out of our cells. We have apparently lost all the privileges we fought so hard to get but this was definitely the reality of prisons life. …….If they are failing apart what about us who are perceived as threat to national security but anyway time will tell. As far as I am concern, I told my fellow detainees one thing is certain-the threat of execution is over.

Another despicable component of the book was your inability to remain consistent in detailing your facts. In discussing the November 11, counter-coup incident, one of the most controversial epochs in the history of the July 22^nd coup, you started by giving the impression to your readers that you had all the opportunity to discuss with the survivors of the incident in jail and pretty much understood everything that happened. You even listed their names and how they were generally treated in comparison to you, the earlier detainees. It is important to note that up to this day scholars are trying to find out what exactly happened and whether or not there was a foiled conspiracy that caused the death of about thirteen officers and other ranks. In page 137 paragraph 3 you came up with one enlightenment about that controversy by writing: The truth of the matter is that there was no fighting or plot to topple the military regime but a mere execution exercise against future dissidents or perceived opponents within the army.

Then in page 139, paragraph 2, you went on to contradict all that by writing: Well the truth of the matter surrounding the 11 November incident is that apart from the Presidential Guards, the rank and file within the army were totally disgruntled with the way the AFPRC was performing in terms of governance. They were least pleased with the fact that the AFPRC members were enjoying with their immediate military entourage, likewise harassing and humiliating fellow Gambians whilst there was no changes to their conditions, with added insecurity and rampant arrests of member of the army and the police. Therefore the mutineers under the leadership of Basirou Barrow, Ndot Faal, Lt. Minteh and many others wanted to seize power.

What side of your conclusion in the November 11, do you really believe in? Chongs, this major misinformation alone should have been enough reason for the book to be recalled for further correction. It is possible that Mr. Karamba Touray missed some of these reckless mistakes but if he didn’t and still chose to praise you the way he did for writing an excellent book then I have bad news for you. Your readers are treating you as a joke and laughing at you loud. Going by all your puffed-up resume of being one of the best –trained military officer in the Gambia, once ranked second in command in the entire pre-coup-national police force, and not forgetting your outstanding performance of resisting the coup with blood and guts, I believe you will agree with me that your book is supposed to be a serious reference material to scholars learning about Gambia’s military history. Now imagine how disappointed scholars will be when they try to find answers from your book about the November 11 tragedy.  

  Another one of your confused state of mind worth drawing your attention to was when in your usual immodest ways of elevating your achievements you attempted to impress your readers in page 85, paragraph 3: ………… I gave him lessons together with then Cpl Harry Valentine and Private Lang Tombong Tamba before they took their Cadet Officer Selection Exams while I was Chief Instructor of the Gendarmerie Training School for over 3 years. Fortunately for all of them they all made it became Cadet Officers……. …..I was the 1^st Battalion Commander responsible for all operations of the Gambia Gendarmerie, de-facto second in command to the force commander then Major PSS Jagne. In fact many members of the force used to call them the “Chongan Boys”.  

Invariably, then in page 81 paragraphs 2&4 while  writing about your bravery when leading your men for the decisive assault to destroy the mutineers on July 22^nd 1994  at around Bond Road Junction you had complained: …... I ordered all members of the unit concealed in the bush to advance with me on foot towards the bridge. …we linked up with the unit there under the command of ASP Harry Valentine (“a Chongan Boy”) a TSG trained with the police headquarters.

……………I shouted for our elements to open to start the ambush but it seemed all of them were afraid, including the unit commander (Harry Valentine). I cannot blame them most of them were civilian policemen.

Did you not honestly know that the same Harry Valentine you trained in your school as a Gendarmerie corporal until he passed his cadet exams making you very proud of him as a “Chongan boy” is the same person you have dismissed as a useless civilian policeman? Or were there two Harry Valentines, one in the defunct gendarmerie and the other in the police force? You tell me. By and large while I cannot remember where or when you were promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel, I have noticed in the book that most of your fellow gendarmerie officers-majors, captains and lieutenants- who moved to the police force are addressed with police ranks with only you keeping the military rank.

I guess that must be an underhanded mechanism to allow you to disassociate with them when blaming the police and identify with them when praising the gendarmerie; that’s double standard in its most transparent form.

I couldn’t wait for this one in particular written in page 84, paragraph 4 where you lamented: Two 2^nd lieutenants-Lt. Sabally and Hydara entered with other few soldiers in a very aggressive manner, kicking the telephones, chairs, insulting and threatening us. Sabally whom I have never seen was particularly hostile.  

If you were a sober writer, you would have remembered the statement you made about Sana Sabally being the student leader in the Armitage high school whom you pacified by simply speaking when you were ordered to use force against the student. President Jawara was on tour and you took care of the situation in a way nobody could. Was that not the case you narrated? Anyhow that is not where I want to take you to remind where you once met Sana seen Sabally.

You might remember that in 1990 I one day consulted you about my desire to leave the army because of my frustration with its hopeless future owing to the insidious mismanagement of the institution by the authorities in charge. My intention was to retire on medical grounds following the gun-shot accident I had had two years earlier while serving in the ‘Senegambian’ Confederation. My injuries had left me partially handicapped on the right leg from the compound fracture on my thigh bone inflicted by the ballistic. A team of medical experts at the RVH headed by Doctor Jones boarded me with the approval of the army commander to determine my effectiveness as an infantry soldier; based on their finding they unanimously recommended that I should be retired on health reasons if the infantry was the unit I must remain in. The report was addressed to the commander which I hand-delivered to the office.

 Coincidentally a day after submitting the report, another officer Lieutenant Momodou Camara, one of my best friends in the barracks tendered his resignation as well. He was also disoriented with the whole misguided direction the army was taking without any hope of a corrective measure. To my surprise Mr. Camara’s letter was approved and mine rejected on the pretext that in order to leave I had to pay the government all the money it had spent on my training, both foreign and domestic. The draconian rule contravened the Armed Forces Act that clearly stated that commissioned officers could resign their commission on the only condition that they gave a month’s notice to the administration.

All throughout that period we had talked regularly about how I should go about it. You had always expressed your sympathy and had assured me your total support against the command.

Then after all my efforts failed I tried putting up a resistance with the hope that it would finally flip the situation to my favor. I was wrong. In a blatant disregard to the country’s and army’s legal framework, they charged me with fourteen counts of ridiculous military offenses and scheduled me for a court martial. Upon updating you, you had expressed your disappointment with the command decision and had strongly encouraged me to remain steadfast. When I tried to employ the service of Mr. Antouman Gaye to represent me in such a crucial case, the command disapproved it right away. Doctor Jones was also forbidden from entering the barracks to stand as my witness. In fact that trial caused a huge problem between the army and the Royal Victoria Hospital Doctors who for a while stopped treating sick soldiers, resulting to the death of Corporal Manseray a young NCO in his twenties.

Yes,the trial was held at Yundum Barracks in September 1990 few weeks after the first ECOMOG contingent departed for Liberia. However, on the day of the court martial, to my consternation you arrived at the barracks as the main prosecutor representing the command and had treated me as if you had never known or seen me in your life.

To convict me however, which you eventually did after few sessions, you had to use a conscienceless and ungodly officer whom you had coached to swear under oath that I had never had a gunshot injury known to anybody in the army, during or after the confederation. The original medical report from the RVH had disappeared and the copy I had retained was inadmissible as an exhibit because of your argument that it was forged. At last the Nigerian DPP Mr. Onadiko advised the panel to find me guilty and demote me from the rank of a first lieutenant to a second. I later learnt that you had celebrated my conviction that whole night running from bar to another in the Banjul area drinking and boasting about your competence as a natural prosecutor for finding me guilty

This is where I want you to pay special attention to what you need to know about that trial.

When in the middle of the trial I recalled that the medical report was processed at the chief clerk’s office before being forwarded for the commander’s attention, I sought for the evidence in the ledger where the recipient together with the date and time was supposed to be recorded; that page in the book was torn out. You probably did that. However a young conscientious lance corporal, serving as a junior clerk at the office took the risk out of faith by volunteering to testify on my behalf. Under oath he had said that my medical report was actually received at the office and was forwarded to the commander. You cross-examined him and discredited his statement as nothing but lies. He was later almost fired after the trial and had his opportunity to apply for officer selection delayed for over a year. Sana Sabally for your information was the Lance Corporal who testified at my behalf in that 1990 court martial at Yundum Barracks.  So if you ever have doubts again about why Sabally or any GNA soldier was so mean to you during the coup, always remember that it could be the reciprocation the abuse they had from you before the coup.

Last but not the least, please stop complaining about people abusing the justice system in the APRC era for falsely charging and prosecuting innocent people after being once the worst abuser of innocent people’s fundamental rights in the Gambia. If you could do what you had done to me and many innocent soldiers in the military, God had mercy to the civilians you were notoriously known to target those days. And don’t also forget that your principal witness in my court martial was the officer you wrote about in page 121 describing him as your best friend. You added there: ……..for the benefit of the readers, I was his best man during his wedding………

Regrettably, I once in the past tried to defend you when some Gambians wrote online complaining about how abusive you were as a police or gendarmerie chief in the pre-coup era. My paper if you could remember was entitled the bigger picture where I passionately defended you for the difficult times you had endured with people who merely disrespected you because of your young age.  The main reason for being on your side then was my unfortunate conviction that you were a repentant man who had outgrown that bullying tendency, not knowing that the Chongan you were yesterday is the same Chongan you are today.

I believe in supporting my facts. I have also come to conclude that you are somebody who is fond of talking down every person considered to be good in an effort to distort their images or reputations with the probable hope of elevating your pitiful character. In other words, I am simply saying that, just like in your book, everyone you have known in your life except your parents had chronic personality defects that made them in your eyes virtually incompetent, weak, stupid or low-life-good-for nothing wimps. For example on the members of the Gambia Security forces alone, you tried to defame every one of us: Press Jange was an empty opportunists who betrayed you, Ndow Njie was not fit to be a military commander, Jawneh was a useless tribalist, Sheriff Mbye and Alieu Ndure were treacherous, Suwareh was incompetent, Minteh was ignorant, Yaya Jammeh was not a trained officer,  Boli Sarr was a coward, Joberteh was intellectually dishonest, Lang Tombong Tamba a traitor and coward; the army was full of untrained commissioned officers, all policemen were nothing but civilians, the  list goes on and on with nobody being good enough except the “Mighty Chongan” plus Daddy and Mummy. As for me sometimes it is confusing to understand how you want people to perceived me: Samsudeen Sarr was a coward who got crazy in jail out of fear; he betrayed his fellow detainees by accepting a job from the AFPRC government; He killed Yaya Drammeh; he conspires with Bakary Darbo to sabotage the Guinean forces that wanted to foil the coup;   but he is a perfect gentleman who cannot even hurt a fly.   And perhaps you think your readers are herds of retards incapable of figuring you out.

Think about it this way. In jail you also did a lot of acting that could have been interesting reading for my book but I chose not to write about it.  Imagine how you would have felt if I  had written about your religious life in prison where out of utter pretence to project an image of a god fearing person you prayed zillion times in the day, and recited the holy Quran to the point of mastering the longest and most difficult verses in the book, even being metamorphosed into a pseudo Quranic teacher preaching about Allah, the prophets and the importance of the day of judgment that all humans should fear; nonetheless the moment you walked out of the walls of the prison you called a dungeon, you immediately cast away the prayer mat and beads, totally resigned from praying and re-adopted  your old habits of being the Chongan people used to detest except that, thank god, the power you abused so badly that went with it is gone for good.    

Readers will easily detect how you were partly or even totally responsible for chasing away the good dependable officers from the Gambia National Gendarmerie and demoralized the rest of those who were condemned to work with you without any choice.  Instead of honoring the courageous and effective ones, you merely hounded them with brutal vengeance. It is hard to admit and may even anger your sympathizers but only Lt. Jammeh as a Gendarmerie office demonstrated the nerve to stand against the army twice and forced them to retreat where you never had the balls to do so. And you tried to steal that reputation from him on July 22^nd and failed miserably.

 It was a surprise that you mentioned Jammeh’s successful stand against the army twice in the book although with a barrage of condemnation to his character and training.   He was the one who singlehandedly stopped the GNA-Liberian-veteran soldiers in the two mutinies attempted in the country, 1991 and 1992. But like I said instead of honoring and decorating him for that risk he took, you in particular waged a campaign of humiliating the fellow with every negative story you could frame against him. When he could no long bear the unwarranted abuse he left for the army where he was treated with far greater respect.  Many Gendarmerie officers were displeased with your leadership and would have all left if you hadn’t quickly put an embargo to their request to transfer to the Army in 1992. You lost Marong, Hydara and Jammeh at the same time. It was also evident that on July 22^nd with all the so-called special training and experience you boasted about everywhere, you failed to achieve a fraction of what Jammeh did for the Gendarmerie in 1991 and 1992; or what Modou Njie and a handful of Field Force personnel did for the country in 1981. Can you remember how Modou Njie and those men cordon a fighting perimeter at the police headquarters in Banjul that kept Kukoi Samba Sanyang and his militants at bay until the arrival of the Senegalese forces a week later?  They were fewer and less equipped but successfully resisted all assaults from different avenues of approach.

As a matter of fact after what you wrote about the childish resistance you attempted on July 22^nd to stop the coup after which you ran into hiding for three days-calling it “Balangba” instead of “Boriba”- this is what you wrote about your father’s opinion about the situation: On Sunday evening the telephone lines were restored and I spoke to my family. I had discussion with my father who told me that it was a difficult situation and I have to take a difficult decision. He said whatever happened I should not runaway. My father advised me to return to work on Monday and brace myself up for whatever happens because history is in the making. But I should never join the putsches.

I certainly don’t get the rationale of your father advising you to go back to work but not to join the military government, do you? Did you tell him about your failed attempt to play the role of a scarecrow that day?  I don’t think you sincerely explained the details of what happened in those three days of communication break in the country; and you never elaborated on that in the book. And reading what you wrote above, it looked like your father was offering you his conclusive advice over the general situation after exhaustively discussing every implication with you. I still cannot think through what kind of a father, especially yours for that matter, a retired top police commander will after being told by his combatant son that he was gallantly “trying to crush the 22^nd July 1994 military takeover” (page 133, para.2), will still advice the son to report to work expecting normalcy in the wake of the military’s successful takeover. You were lucky that the Gambia was not Nigeria, Ghana or other countries where after a successful coup morons who attempt to foil their operation and hope to quietly blend back into the system unnoticed, instead of running away to avoid being captured are within the hour of their arrest lined up and shot by firing squad.   

Nonetheless, I would like to know why you left out our historic encounter at Denton Bridge on July 22^nd the day of the coup where your so-called resistance attempt started collapsing. Given your inability to understand your own reasoning, it was clear that the bridge was where you failed to carry out the orders of your superior officer, the Inspector General of Police. I met you there in the climax of the event and wrote about it in my book. Captain Suwareh, Lieutenant Minteh, and Pa Mbye whom you said even tried to convince you to have me arrested were all there. Yet in your book you wouldn’t write a word about my appearance there. Understandably, you probably had realized that it won’t dovetail well in your game plan of painting me as a coward. I wouldn’t waste my time going over that again but will try to catalog your actions that day to show that you simply failed as the top police operational commander and instead of owning up to it you continued to blame every member of the security forces, except yourself.

After exhausting your list of those you believed to have been the cause of the success of the coup except yourself, you then blamed it on the superior weapons the army had. You know what Jammeh and his advancing party told me at the Denton Bridge after I left you at the Banjul side to talk to them on the other end and first warned them about the American marines in Banjul fully equipped with sophisticated weapons such as amphibious tanks and armor destroyers? “Captain Sarr we don’t give a damn about the Americans and their weapons if they attempt to intervene in this operation we will fight them to the last man”.

In fact by your own story it seemed as if you didn’t have a clue about the impending coup up to the morning the operation started. As the overall operational commander of the police force at the time if you couldn’t know that the coup that was so widely rumored to be on the planning at Yundum Barracks was due to take place on July 22^nd, 1994, then I am sorry for the comment, but you must have been a lousy operation commander. You should have been embarrassed to even write that anywhere. You indicated that when you arrived at Police Headquarter that morning-that was after you abandoned your men and ran away from Denton Bridge- the IGP Press Jagne gave the orders to all police units to shoot to kill any mutineer. He then dispatched you for the second time to go to the bridge and see to it that his orders were carried out accordingly.  This is how you put it in page 81, paragraphs 1&2 respectively after you ran away from the Bridge back to Banjul: The IGP (Press Jagne) still insisted that he had given orders to the TSG units to shoot to kill and that at no cost the soldiers should enter Banjul. He further told me to return to the Bridge and make sure this happened. (Did you brief him about your unilateral decision to call for radio silence without seeking his approval first? I don’t think so; yet you still blamed him for the failure of the operation you usurp from everybody who could have performed better).

Dutifully (you continued), I left again to return to the bridge but downstairs within the police headquarters building to my surprise I saw Captain Amadou Suwareh. There was no time to talk; he joined me in my car and we started heading towards the Bridge. Upon arrival at Gambia High School, I ordered all members of the unit concealed in the bush to advance with me on foot towards the Bridge. On arrival at Radio Syd/ Bond Road, junction we linked up with the unit there under the command of ASP Harry Valentine a TSG trained with the police headquarters.

…………….. I ordered the ambush to proceed by opening fire with my AK47 rifle. The soldiers scattered and started running towards the graveyard. I shouted for our elements to open to start the ambush but it seemed all of them were afraid including the unit commander. I cannot blame the most of them were civilian policemen.

Well Mr. Chongan I am back to this spot again where you wanted your readers to believe that you gallantly led your troops and commanders into the battlefield where they failed you because of their gutlessness as no-good-for-nothing-police civilians. 

My friend, it was in broad daylight at about 1130 am. I was a live witness to the arrowhead formation adopted by the soldiers marching on the highway, not camouflaged or concealed and were at the killing range of the AK47 in your hands. Tactically it was the best recommended formation in that kind of terrain s when moving towards a line of contact. On the flanks, NCOs leading fighting sections or battle groups were perfectly applying Individual movement technique, (IMT, US army tactic) that allowed individual fighters to move forward and gain ground while their partners remain static but well locked and loaded to give them covering fire if fired upon by the enemy. But even with all that, the battle advantage of surprising the enemy by opening firing at him first was on your side because of your defensive positions. Yet when it came to that, I could read that you fired the first shots into the air, big time. You wouldn’t say that you missed everyone; over seventy soldiers from Bravo and Charlie Companies, 1^st Battalion marching openly on the Banjul highway on a bright sunny day, did you? I guess not.  It therefore meant that you were equally gutless to aim, shoot and kill as your superior commander clearly laid out his orders. How then could you blame Pa Sallah Jange for betraying you when you couldn’t carry out his orders in the first place? Anyway the most interesting part was after showing your men that you didn’t have the balls to shoot and kill any soldier, you naively turned to them to do the shooting you wouldn’t try. They must have wondered whether you were dreaming or what you had been snorting to expect them to obey such a dumb order.

You said in page 72, paragraph 4 that: Most of the Army Officers were normally commissioned with no formal officer training and then just sent to America to do the IOBC-Infantry Officers Basic Course……

I happened to fall in the category of such officers you are trivializing their qualifications. For this one time I wouldn’t care yielding to your fantasy of being a better trained officer than me; but if you think you were better qualified as an officer than the other GNA IOBC graduates such as James Johnson, Danish Coke, Momodou Sonko, Sabally, Singhateh and the others, you must be nuts.

Once again, I wish you will heed my advice and give up the self-deception Bro., the men following you were smart enough to know that you were not serious about fighting, but merely pretending to fool around with them. You may outrank them but not smarter and naturally out-bluff them but not wittier. They could see through you like transparent glass.    It was the same thing at the Bridge until you ran away with the flimsy excuse that the police radio signal operator who through the net announced the imminent fall of Fajara Barracks compelling you to order radio silence before rushing to Banjul headquarters. By ordering radio silence without even seeking approval from your superiors showed, how despite your struggle to cast the blame onto others, especially PSS Jagne, your total failure as the operational commander who took over the overall command and didn’t know what to do. As a rule of thumb you just don’t order for a radio silence in a state of emergency when the enemy lacks the capability to hack into your frequency and use your tactics against you or to his advantage. The GNA soldiers didn’t carry a single communication set that day and were not interested in any tactical communication you were relaying among your troops, if there was any at all. 

Bear in mind that when you demonstrated to your men that you couldn’t shoot to kill, they all started to know better than following a commander who was all a joke. Then it translated into “to hell with him” when they abandoned you with your orderly whose immediate actions clearly rescued you from being stuck in the mud at the Bond Road mangroves. You wrote in page 82, paragraph 1: I then told my orderly to make a move and that we should return to headquarters. We crawled for 200 meters in the mud and water under the mangrove swamp trees then entered the dirty ditch at Bund Road and crawled to the main road, where he stopped an approaching vehicle at gun point and boarded it and ordered the driver to drive us back to police headquarters.      

You said that the soldiers were running when you opened fire. I know that you have a low impression of the training we used to have in the GNA, but trust me Chongs, that’s normal Standard Operational Procedure (SOP) in field craft. That’s what the British Army Training Team (BATT) used to teach them straight from the conventional military field craft instruction book, starting from the time of Major Ken Wright to the last BATT commander Colonel Jim Shaw. On that day they were all on top of their tactical skills, except that they never wasted their bullets by returning fire to a shooter whose shots were aimed at nobody. But you wrote, page 81, paragraph 5 ,……. The soldiers scattered and started running towards the graveyard.

 If you had really meant business and seriously wanted to start a fight you would have been able to hit at least one of them out of their vulnerable positions. You would have known if the soldiers would let you start your three-day “Boriba” and hiding.

 In that same paragraph you quoted me as telling you in jail that Major Saho was unwilling to cooperate when I tried to persuade him to get his heavy weapons against the mutineers. Yes I told you about my attempt to get the weapons from Major Saho. But that was when I found you at the Denton Bridge where the only weapon you had in hand was a 9mm pistol with fewer than 15 rounds in your magazine. And from what I was told you had already expended few rounds in the air to scare off the soldiers.

Recently, however, we did discuss that situation again where I now agreed that Major Saho’s refusal to utilize his weapon that day, in hind sight, was the best decision at that moment. Like you I probably was not ready to shoot and kill for anything under the sun except may be in self defense. And at any rate fighting was not a good option. You have never fought and perhaps never even seen a person killed by bullets, so please give us a break about the endless saber rattling when you don’t have any understanding about what military fighting means. Gambia didn’t need a fight before, now or at any time in the future. By the way when did you cook the story in your mind that you and I tried to convince the government to evenly share the consignment of heavy weapons purchased for the army between our two forces? If Captain Kassama former ADC to President Jawara had said that then I would understand. Kassama and I even met the Secretary General about it who had assured us that he was working on equipping the police better with Israel weapons.  All you used to do then was run your loud mouth everywhere about how the gendarmerie was better than the army and would stop them at any time, place or situation. I even remember the provocative road march you once organized with your men that unusually brought right near Yundum Barracks where you fired blank round with you weapons angering most soldiers. Frankly speaking most GNA soldiers hated you and everything you represented and were willing to show you how better than you they were in combat engagements on July 22^nd 1994. But you were not that foolish to go beyond acting that day.

 You demonized General Lang Tombong Tamba for surrendering prematurely after he took over the command and control of the Presidential Guard that morning. To be honest with you, I think he was one great officer who saved the country from bloodbath that day. When I spoke to him from Radio Gambia after the departure of President Jawara to the American naval ship, he categorically guaranteed me that he was not going to start a fight in the country and will ensure that his men followed his orders along those lines.  Gambians should thank god and sane people like him for the July 22^nd   coup to happen in a peaceful atmosphere without anybody losing his life. 

I don’t understand what has happened to him lately, but he is a person I will not hesitate to vouch for his good conduct, decency and honorability. I wish for once I can influence President Jammeh’s mind to be lenient with all of them in these trying moments. He was throughout my interaction with him in the army a wonderful gentleman. You can take that to the bank.