Suspected of backing a coup plot in opposition to the longtime dictator of Gambia almost 20 years in the past, Pharing Sanyang described in a Denver courtroom Thursday how he was overwhelmed with pipes and palm tree branches, pistol-whipped and hit within the face with a hammer.
Particles from the sandy floor of a courtyard within the West African nation the place the army officer fell throughout one of many 2006 beatings lodged in his eyes, inflicting injury requiring a number of surgical procedures, he testified.
Sanyang, a former army officer in Gambia, took the stand in U.S. District Courtroom in Denver in opposition to one of many former troopers he mentioned beat him — Michael Sang Correa.
Correa is on trial in after being indicted in 2020 underneath a hardly ever used legislation that enables folks to be prosecuted within the U.S. judicial system for torture allegedly dedicated overseas.
He’s charged with torturing Sanyang and 4 others and being a part of a conspiracy to torture alleged coup plotters whereas serving with the Junglers, a army unit that reported on to former Gambian president Yahya Jammeh.
Sanyang advised jurors he ultimately agreed to signal a false confession however wiped blood from his head onto the paper to point out he had been tortured. Then, after refusing to admit on tv, he was shocked with wires plugged right into a wall socket and overwhelmed once more, he mentioned.
Bleeding, he learn his confession for the tv digicam, however solely the audio was recorded to hide the torture, he advised the court docket.
“I needed to save my physique,” Sanyang mentioned of why he agreed to admit, including he didn’t be part of the failed rebel in opposition to Jammeh, who ousted the earlier president of Gambia in a coup of his personal in 1994.
Sanyang spent almost a decade in jail after being convicted of treason and fled to close by Senegal after his launch.
Correa got here to the U.S. to function a bodyguard for Jammeh in December 2016 and overstayed his visa after Jammeh was ousted in 2017, based on prosecutors. Since someday after arriving, Correa had been residing in Denver and dealing as a day laborer, they mentioned.
Sanyang and different alleged victims traveled from Gambia, Europe and elsewhere within the U.S. to testify this week about their torture. Prosecutors confirmed the jury pictures of victims with scars left by issues together with a bayonet, a burning cigarette and ropes. The boys had been requested to circle scars on pictures and clarify how they acquired them.
Correa’s attorneys haven’t disputed that the defendant was concerned in Sanyang’s torture despite the fact that Sanyang mentioned Correa, like the opposite Junglers, was sporting a face masks. Sanyang mentioned he knew Correa from working with him on the president’s official residence and acknowledged his “strolling gait.”
However his attorneys argue Correa was a low-ranking personal who risked being tortured himself and even killed if he refused Jammeh’s orders.
Demba Dem testified Wednesday that his torturers put a black plastic purchasing bag over his head and beat him as he was handcuffed.
One other time, they put a heavy bag of sand on his again after which held a chunk of sizzling metallic near his nostril. Then they hung him the wrong way up, his wrists and ankles tied, beating him once more.
The previous trainer who turned a member of the Gambian parliament as a part of Jammeh’s political occasion mentioned Correa used a keep on with beat him.
Dem, who mentioned he was not a part of the deliberate coup, later moved to the Netherlands along with his household after in search of asylum and was identified with post-traumatic stress dysfunction. He was reluctant to speak on the witness stand concerning the impression the torture had on his life aside from saying it was “very unhealthy” and asking a prosecutor to maneuver on.
Nonetheless, Dem mentioned he was “completely satisfied” to be in court docket to attempt to maintain one in every of his abusers accountable.
“I’ve to do it however I really feel happy,” he mentioned.
The trial is scheduled to proceed into subsequent week.
In 2021, a reality fee in Gambia urged that the perpetrators of crimes dedicated underneath Jammeh’s regime be prosecuted by the federal government. Different international locations have additionally tried folks related along with his rule.
Final yr, Jammeh’s former inside minister was sentenced to twenty years behind bars by a Swiss court docket for crimes in opposition to humanity. In 2023, a German court docket convicted a Gambian man who was additionally a member of the Junglers of homicide and crimes in opposition to humanity for involvement within the killing of presidency critics in Gambia.
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