Senegambia

“I’ve Never Seen Sadibou Hydara,” Witness Harps on Ex-Junta Personnel Who Was Castrated and Died in Prison

A high profile witness today touched on the case of Sadibou Hydara – a key figure in the successful dethroning of Jawara’s regime.

Captain Sadibou and vice-chairperson of the 1994 junta Sana B. Sabally were arrested by Edward Singhatey and orderlies on the directives of Yaya Jammeh in 1995.

The duo were captured along with their guards and stripped of their rifles on the suspicion of attempting to leapfrog Jammeh. Their trialing and subsequent incarceration followed.

In a chilling testimony last year April, Sana B Sabally, fighting back tears, told of his and Sadibou’s castration during time of which he was buried to neck-level thrice, fed poo and tortured over twenty-times.

“This was a repetition of what they asked me and Sadibou to do to have sex with me and me to have sex with him. Since we refused, they said then we will castrate you this was the time they started with Hydara. They forced him down on the ground and put the iron bar under his testicles and Manlafi Corr took the Carrington Hammer and force-beat the muscle on the testicular, he passed out.  I was not a medical doctor at the time but if it were today, I will definitely say, the cause of Sadibou’s death was from that because there after he bled up to the day he died. Blood on the nostril, ears, anus, penis, everything was blood,” Sana B Sabally said, lifting the lid on batterings meted out to him 24 years of gruesome battering.

And harping on what he might have known over the treatment of inmates including Saidybou Hydara while he was prisons director, Ansumana Manneh told the TRRC – a commission probing violations under Jammeh’s rule -: “I do not know Sadibou Hydara and I never met him or seen him with my eyes. When he was brought to the prisons I was in McCarthy then. So I can’t say much about him.”

Photo: Ansuma Manneh during today’s hearing

Elucidating on nutritional aspect, Ansumana said: “The food in prison was not good. The prisoners used to suffer from beriberi that shows the food was poor. Now the food has improved because prisoners do not have beriberi. Now they have upgraded the kitchen because we attach great importance towards preparation of the food.”

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