The Independent (Banjul)
April 23, 2004 
Posted to the web April 27, 2004 
Sana Camara
Banjul 
It was a spine-chilling scene as six armed anarchists seemingly playing by 
the script of a gory Hollywood movie burst upon The Independent's press house in 
Kanifing in the wee hours of Tuesday while nine, affable and innocent men 
were busy printing and compiling an edition of the paper intended for the 
post-Easter week.
The men apparently emboldened more by the darkness of the night than by any 
moral consideration to deliberately disrupt and endanger the lives of the 
workers and eventually destroy a D1.3 million printing machine told everybody 
inside the press house to lie flat on the floor. Three of the intruders wore masks, 
while the rest wore tight outfits. They spoke Gambian English.
All were armed save for one who carried a 20-litre gallon of petrol, which he 
rushed to pour on the printing machine before lighting a match.
They came with the devastating element of surprise and took every member of 
the printing staff off guard. The least the nine had expected that fateful 
morning was not a group of mindlessly dangerous late-night intruders bent on 
destruction and a killing spree. What they had expected was to finish their work in 
time for what they intended as another edition of The Independent. But that 
expectation was not to be as apologists for the devil in all their wickedness 
descended on the printing house.
Although Manager and lead printer Namory Trawally has recounted the incident 
many times over for the benefit of the local media, he will always have a 
vivid recollection of the attackers as they pointed their guns at them and warned 
them all not to move if they were interested in staying alive.
"By this time my two assistants and I were in the inner room where the 
printing machine was stationed. As I was cleaning the machine to begin printing the 
rest of what had remained of that doomed publication, I heard the crackling 
sound of a gun in the outer section and knew some form of confusion was going on 
there. During that brief period we were with the notion that the compilers 
were embroiled in a quarrel or a fight, as was usually the case during 
arguments. But this time the cause of the disruption had come from outside. The real 
fact was that those who had seized the press house were already pointing their 
guns menacingly at the team of compilers who were not in our view. Suddenly one 
of them burst into where we were and poured the contents of the gallon he was 
holding on the machine and proceeded to light a match, which he threw on the 
machine, setting it instantly alight. By this time my two assistants and I 
realised that something was grievously amiss and it was now a real life and death 
situation but sensing our state of alertness, one of the intruders who was 
standing at one end of the burning machine quickly brandished a gun right across 
where I stood and told me to jump into the flames. Surprised and unprepared 
as we were for the attack, I just did not think my fear of guns was enough for 
me to do his bidding. I was in slow but steady motion to get near him and 
possibly challenge his hold of the gun. It was God's intervention that helped as I 
realised that the fire on the machine could quickly spread to other equipment 
in the printing house and it was necessary to make a desperate move for dear 
life. My pulse was racing as I contemplated taking him head on. As a neared 
him in a flash I gripped the hand holding the gun, and for what seemed like 
eternity we struggled until luckily for me he lost balance and grazed past the 
burning machine as both of us fell under the fury of our mutual death-like grip. 
That was how the fire caught him and he made for the door, crying out in agony 
and to the consternation of his co-attackers who temporarily disengaged from 
keeping the compilers down. By this time one of my assistants had bolted for 
the main entrance and had dodged blows and gun butts to safety. But he came off 
with injuries to the forehead as a gun butt caught him at the door. Darkness 
descended on all of us as the electric connections to the machine wilted and 
gave way.

The man with burns brought the turning point as his fellow attackers tried to 
help him douse the fire enveloping him after they had struggled with some of 
the compilers in their macabre intention to lock the door while we were all 
still in the printing house and give us zero chance for an escape. As they eased 
their grip on the door to help their burning accomplice, we seized this 
chance to press our numerical strength on the door and escaped the raging flames, 
which was growing in ferocity. If not by God's grace we could have perished in 
that inferno and a good alibi would have sprung from the ashes of the incident 
perhaps suggesting an electrical accident that would have been blamed on no 
one in particular. The gun I picked was apparently dropped by the man in flames 
and I did not waste time to hide it as a telling evidence and a clue as to 
the identity of the attackers. It was a brief drama of life and death but thank 
God our will to survive was stronger than their nefarious desire to see us 
die. Most of us sustained injuries. I lost some cash and clothes apart from 
nursing a strained tendon. I surrendered the gun to the police by daybreak as 
officers visited the scene. In fact one of the attackers came back asking for the 
gun, threatening that he knew the home of every one of us and that if it was 
not produced they were going to search for it. He left after realising that his 
attempt to reclaim it was futile.
"For the vehicle used by the attackers we couldn't recognise its make or 
colour. All we could make out was that they drove off in a waiting pick-up. 
Although neighbours came to help, put out the fire, it was so strong all our efforts 
combined could do little to stop it from growing bigger and were had to 
contact the Churchill Town fire brigade whose personnel had told us that they had 
no water in their reserve tanks at that moment. By the time the Bakau fire 
station, arrived at the scene the fire had already reduced everything to black 
debris".


"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are 
evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
 - Albert Einstein 
"
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change 
the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has."
- Margaret Mead 

"When the government fears the people, you have liberty. When the people fear 
the government, you have tyranny." 
- Thomas Jefferson

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" 
- Edmund Burke

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