According to a statement released on Tuesday, the attorney general of Switzerland has indicted the former interior minister of The Gambia, Ousmane Sonko for crimes against humanity committed while Yahya Jammeh was the country’s despotic ruler.
Ousmane Sonko is accused of having supported, participated in and failed to prevent “systematic and generalised attacks” as part of a repressive campaign by security forces against Jammeh’s opponents, the Office of the Attorney General said.
Sonko’s attorney, Philippe Currat, told newsmen on Wednesday that his client disagreed with the accusations and that some of the alleged activities took place before the Swiss Criminal Code’s articles on crimes against humanity went into effect.
Sonko, who served as interior minister from 2006 to 2016, went to Sweden before traveling to Switzerland and requesting asylum there.
The Geneva-based legal organisation TRIAL International filed a complaint under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which permits the prosecution of the most serious crimes regardless of where they were committed, and it led to his arrest by Swiss police in January 2017. Since then, Sonko has been kept in Switzerland.
The Federal Criminal Court of Switzerland is scheduled to hear the case at an unspecified time. It will be only the second such trial in the nation’s history.
“We are very satisfied that this is going ahead,” said Philip Grant, executive director of TRIAL International.
“We hope this will generate momentum and that the trial will put pressure on Equatorial Guinea to eventually extradite Jammeh,” he added. The Gambia’s former president fled there after a political crisis in 2017.
Violations said the indictment set a precedent for The Gambian government to “take its responsibility to bring Yaya Jammeh and his henchmen to face justice.”
“Today we rejoice that finally, justice has caught up with one of the key perpetrators against Gambians, whose victims continue to live in pain and misery,” said Madi Jobarteh, a human rights activist.
Over the course of more than 20 years, the former president Jammeh presided over the 2.5 million-person nation of West Africa, a time characterised by authoritarianism and alleged abuses. Jammeh has refuted the wrongdoing accusations.
