The Gambia will use funds from the United States’ forfeiture of long-time ruler Yahya Jammeh‘s property to pay victims of his rule, authorities have said.
The Gambia’s Reparations Commission said it received $2.5m (£1.86m) from the sale of a mansion in Maryland owned by the former leader of the West African nation.
It said it was “pleased to inform victims, survivors and the public that it has received a total of $2,573,414.10” from the sale of Jammeh’s property.
It added that it was committed to managing the funds responsibly and transparently, “with due regard to the rights and needs of victims and survivors”.
The United States secured the right to sell the property in 2022 on the grounds that it was acquired through “criminal proceeds and misappropriated Gambian public funds”.
Jammeh ruled The Gambia for more than 20 years after taking power in a coup in 1994, a period marked by allegations of human rights abuses, forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.
He lost the 2016 election to Adama Barrow, first accepting defeat and then rejecting the result. He eventually stepped down in 2017 under intense regional and international pressure, after troops from several West African nations, including Senegal, were deployed to The Gambia and threatened to drive him out.
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He went into exile in Equatorial Guinea.
A national commission later found that he owned 281 properties in The Gambia, as well as one in the United States and one in Morocco and controlled more than 100 bank accounts.
It concluded that he could not have afforded them on his salary and that he had misappropriated more than $300m.
Jammeh is accused of presiding over the murder of political opponents, disappearances, rape and torture.
A commission of inquiry found that widespread abuses led to the deaths of “240-250 Gambians and non-Gambians at the hands of the state or its agents”.
BBCNEWS
