An inmate testifying before Gambia’s truth commission has revealed chilling incident of how a distraught prisoner committed suicide by slighting his own throat.
Narrating ill treatments meted out to those sentenced, Sambo Doro Bah recounted how a certain Buba Ceesay -serving jail – slit his throat in his own cells having grown fed up.
“Buba Ceesay slaughtered his neck with razor,” Doro, condemned for life told commissioners investigating right violations under Jammeh’s 22-year rule.
Bah yesterday shocked most with moving story of how Basse’s Police Commissioner Nfamara Jallow oversaw his torture, tied him up with a rope upside down and shoved acid in his anus and privates over a woman issue.
Flashing back on Buba Ceesay’s heartbreaking demise, he said: “He (Buba) was fed up and started suffering mental problem. I looked into his cell and saw blood gushing. I shouted for the officer-in-charge. When he came, I took the keys from him myself and opened the cell. I told the officer take him (Buba) to hospital before he dies. He said he has to inform his superiors first and I told him what are you waiting for, go do that then. Next, I heard Buba was at Harr Yalla (a section of the Banjul hospital for serious emergencies).”
Serving 16 years at Gambia’s highly derided correction centre on what he calls “false allegations”, Bah said, he only heard about Buba afterwards at 1pm that day when news reached he has died.
“At the time, I couldn’t openly blame officers because I dared not. Some prisoners died because they were denied medical treatment. Inmates grow desperate and suicidal because of lack of help or negligence from the officers. Some prisoners will, out of distraught, head-butt the walls and wish they were dead,” he reveals.
