By Omar Bah
Reed Brody, a Hungarian-American human rights lawyer and prosecutor known as the “Dictator Hunter” has issued a stark warning that any political alliance that paves the way for former dictator Yahya Jammeh’s return would put The Gambia’s new accountability infrastructure to its most dangerous test.
“If any alliance forms with Jammeh’s return as part of the bargain, that is a direct test of whether accountability survives contact with electoral politics,” Reed told The Standard yesterday.
He said Gambians sat through years of TRRC testimony that named names and documented atrocities in detail. “There is a strong, and entirely legitimate, expectation that this leads to trials — not a negotiated homecoming. The government’s position has always been the right one: Jammeh is not above the law, and there is no legal or diplomatic basis for the claim that Ecowas guaranteed him safe return.”
Brody added that the 2017 Joint Declaration on the Political Situation in The Gambia was never signed and was rejected by the incoming government and that it contains no assurance against prosecution, and it couldn’t have, because international law doesn’t permit amnesty or immunity for crimes like murder, torture, and sexual violence.
“The infrastructure for prosecution finally exists. Whether it moves at the speed victims — waiting a decade and often more— actually need, is now as much a political question as a legal one.”
He further stressed that The Gambia has actually moved further than almost any other African country that came out of a truth commission.
“The Special Accountability Mechanism Act passed in 2024, Ecowas approved the hybrid Special Tribunal that December, a special division of the High Court now has jurisdiction over Jammeh-era crimes, and this year the government finally named a Special Prosecutor, Martin Hackett, to lead the investigations. That’s genuine institutional progress, and it’s more than most transitional justice processes ever achieve.”
But institutions on paper, Reed added, “Are not the same as justice delivered.”
He said the real test is whether the Special Prosecutor’s Office gets the resources, the forensic capacity, and critically the political backing to actually turn TRRC findings into indictments.
“That last piece is where an election year becomes dangerous.”
Also, commenting on the issue, Human activist Madi Jobarteh said: “Indeed the idea that any coalition will consider the return of the tinpot dictator Yahya Jammeh preferably to evade accountability as a condition is not only an affront to victims but also a threat to national unity and security.”
He said no ruling or opposition party should form a coalition with the so-called ‘APRC No-To-Alliance’ in the first place because “this is a group that denies the brutality and corruption of the Jammeh regime”.
“It is a group which is not seeking justice and reconciliation but hell-bent on defending an evil dictatorship that cost hundreds of lives and billions of dalasi while weaponised ethnicity, religion and culture thereby destroying the moral fabric of this society and almost irreparably divided our nation.”
He said all political parties should rather not only shun this so-called No-To-Alliance but also the APRC party itself and its officers especially those who held positions in the executive and legislative branches should be held accountable for using their positions to entrench dictatorship in this country.
“I call on all citizens not to vote for any candidate who seeks a coalition with dictatorship enablers and apologists. If they do so and succeed, surely, they will also turn into dictators because they have demonstrated that they are not concerned about democracy and the republic and her citizens.”