THE HAGUE, Netherlands (CN) — The trial of a Gambian man accused of murdering political opponents of the West African country's former president began on Monday in the northern German city of Celle.
Bai Lowe is facing three charges of crimes against humanity for his role as a driver for a paramilitary group known as the Junglers, who carried out assassination orders given by ex-president Yahya Jammeh and engaged in a terror campaign against the population of the small country of Gambia.
The 46-year-old was wearing a hood and covered his face with a briefcase as he entered the courtroom. He was arrested last year in the German city of Hanover, where he had been living in exile. Under universal jurisdiction, Germany can prosecute atrocity crimes regardless of where they took place.
AFP correspondent Deyda Hydara, who was gunned down in a drive-by shooting in the country’s capital Banjul in 2004, is one of the victims Lowe has been charged with killing.
“It is a great day for justice but it is only the beginning of a long road,” Hydara’s son, Baba Hydara, told reporters outside the courthouse ahead of the hearing.
Lowe is also charged with driving Junglers in 2006 to assassinate opposition politician Dawda Nyassi and lawyer Ousman Sillah, who spoke out against the atrocities committed by Jammeh. Sillah survived his attack but sustained serious injuries. At a press briefing ahead of Monday’s hearing, his daughter, Amie Sillah, described her father’s ongoing health problems.
“We are very thankful that he survived it even though he was affected mentally, physically, emotionally, financially and also him battling with some post-traumatic stress syndrome. We want justice,” she said.
In a 2013 interview with Freedom Radio, Lowe admitted to working as a driver for the death squad and admitted to being present for multiple murders. “It happened in my presence, I cannot exclude myself from it and say that I was not there,” he told the Gambian internet radio station based in North Carolina.
Lowe’s trial is the first prosecution of human rights violations committed in Gambia under Jammeh that has taken place outside of the country.
“The indictment of Bai Lowe is meaningful in several ways,” said Philip Grant, executive director of human rights group TRIAL International, in a statement. “It would lead to the opening of the first trial based on universal jurisdiction to judge the atrocities committed under Jammeh’s regime, and it would allow to shed light on the paramilitary unit of the Junglers and their ties to the former president, further preparing the ground for his prosecution.”
His organization provided evidence to German investigators in Lowe’s case.
Jammeh came to power in a coup in 1994 and ruled the country for 22 years. The Gambian Truth Reconciliation and Reparations Commission, a truth commission that investigated crimes committed under the Jammeh regime, found the authorities committed systemic human rights abuses, including torturing and murdering anyone seen as opposed to the government. Jammeh was ousted in elections in 2016 and has been in exile in Equatorial Guinea since.
Another ex-Jungler, Michael Sang Correa, was arrested in Colorado in 2020 after he overstayed his visa. He’s been charged with multiple counts of torture and is awaiting trial. Gambia’s former interior minister, Ousman Sonko, was arrested in Switzerland in 2017 and has remained in detention while Swiss authorities investigate him for crimes against humanity.
Germany has been especially active in prosecuting perpetrators of atrocity crimes under its universal jurisdiction statute. Earlier this year, in the first trial of a Syrian official outside of Syria, a court in Koblenz convicted a former member of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s secret police of facilitating torture and, in another case, sentenced a senior Syrian official to life in prison for the murder of political prisoners at the country’s infamous Branch 251 prison. The trial of a Syrian doctor accused of torturing and killing patients at military hospitals is ongoing.
Perpetrators of crimes in other conflicts have seen justice in German courts as well. A former member of the Islamic State group was convicted by a German court of genocide and committing a war crime for killing a 5-year-old Yazidi girl he had purchased as a slave and then chained up in the hot sun to die.
Lowe's trial is scheduled to last through next year.
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