Dear gambia L,

The newspaper story below was culled from the Daily Observer March 14,2000


Bensouda out, Secka in



The office of the president yesterday announced the removal of Fatou Bom
Bensouda as the Attorney General and secretary of state for Justice, two
years after her appointment.

She is replaced by Pap Cheyassin Secka who until his recent appointment was
in private practice and the lawyer for the ruling APRC.

The new Attorney General was born in 1941 and was educated in The Gambia and
USA where he bagged degrees in Law and Political Science. He returned to the
Gambia in 1973 and in 1975 formed the National Liberation Party, NLP, which
contested the 1977 elections but lost nation-wide. He then moved to Ghana to
practice law. In 1981, he was sentenced to death for his role in the Kukoi
coup. The sentence was commuted to life in jail.

In February 1991 he was pardoned by President Jawara. Mr Secka, is expected
to bring new vigour in the judiciary.

Following the 1994 coup Mr Secka became one of the few Gambian intellectuals
to openly support the change of government.He is The Gambia's sixth attorney
General in five years.

MY PERSONAL OPINION (Mori)
I honestly think that the appointment of Mr. Secka as an attorney general of
the Gambia was a wrong move in such a position that demand a very high level
of neutrality in the administration of justice.Considering the fact that he
was the defender of a rogue regime and thesame regime appointing him in this
position lacks credibility and I believe it is a conflict of interest. What
does the law professors think?
Mori Kebba Jammeh

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