GPU-USA News Release

Chief Manneh Disappearance Continues to Agonize Family

As GPU-USA Sends $500 Family Support

By Cherno Baba Jallow

The continued disappearance of the Gambian journalist Chief Ebrima Manneh is leaving his family in fear and worry, his father Sarjo Manneh, told the GPU-USA recently. "I am really distressed...there are no supporters here," he complained. "I have been to many government offices, visited many marabouts, but nothing has brought my son back." He said he and the entire family had only met roadblocks and closed doors in seeking to know their son's fate. "The entire family is pained by this," the elder Manneh decried, adding that he had sometimes been laughed out of offices when he showed up to ask about his son. "Some people think I have gone crazy for demanding to know whatever has happened to my son."

The Jollof News reported recently that when news got out that his son had been arrested and gone missing in 2006, Mr. Manneh visited his son's former employer, the Daily Observer, soliciting some information. "When Chief Manneh's father came to query about his son's whereabouts, nobody wanted to talk," the paper reported.
 
The elder Manneh continues to search for his son. He told this reporter that he had once gone to the Gambian Vice-president Isatou Njie Saidy's residence seeking audience with her, but was told to meet with her at the State House instead. He said he still hadn't called in on the Vice President because he was feeling very helpless, and that nothing fruitful had come out of his quest for his son's whereabouts. Also, he reported that a number of prominent Gambians had urged him to lay low. "They have been very sympathetic to me...but they want me to stay at home and leave matters in God's hands and not to go on searching for my son all by myself. They are very concerned about my personal safety and that of my family's," he averred.

Dead or Alive

Plain-clothed security officers picked Chief Manneh up at the Observer on July 7 in 2006. His arrest, some eye-witness accounts have allowed, was in connection to a BBC article critical of the Jammeh Administration that he was said to be working on for re-publication in the Observer. Other accounts have also pointed that Manneh's trouble may be linked to his supposed possession of some incriminating information about the 2005 Ghanaian killings "in" The Gambia and which he allegedly may have passed on to the Ghanaian authorities.

Public sightings have placed him in various parts of the country. Following his arrest, Chief Manneh was driven to the Bakau Police Station and later transferred to the headquarters of the National Intelligence Agency in Banjul. Yaya Dampha, a former Foroyaa reporter and now living in exile, wrote recently that his search for the missing journalist had led him to the eastern Gambian town of Fatoto.

"When I reached Fatoto in December 2006," he reported, "I saw an officer escort Manneh out of a cell and serve him food. I couldn't interview Manneh and despite my paper's efforts, police officers wouldn't comment on the sighting." Dampha also claimed that he saw Chief Manneh in April of 2007 at the Royal Victoria Hospital (RVH) under police and prison warden's escort. He believed the journalist was still being held in a secretive cell at the Mile Two prison.

However, an anonymous police source attached to the Mile Two prison told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) in 2009 that Chief Manneh was no longer alive. The source, reported the French news agency, said he saw Manneh being whisked away in the middle of the night by a police officer. "That was the last day I set my eyes on him and to the best of my knowledge, Chief Manneh is not alive."

Chief Manneh's mother also told the AFP that she believed her son would not return alive. "Nothing can convince me that my breadwinner son is still alive,"  she said.

Before she was fired from her job, the former Gambian Attorney General and Justice Minister Marie Saine Firdaus announced to the international community that Chief Manneh had never been in government custody. "The State can only release a person from custody if he or she is in fact in the custody of the State," she demurred. Last month, her successor Edu Gomez, in his response to a query from the Jarra Central representative Hon. Pa Jallow during a parliament sitting, also released a number of denials. President Yahya Jammeh has also repeatedly denied that the missing journalist was in his government's custody. The Gambian Government continues to disregard an ECOWAS-court ruling demanding that Chief Manneh be released immediately and be paid a $100, 000 compensatory fee.

"It is really difficult to get any information from the officials," Mohamed Keita, the Africa Advocacy Coordinator for the New York-based press watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists, told this reporter. "We have all the eye-witness accounts, but since they are denying holding him, there is nothing much to be done."

Financial Help

In the meantime, Chief Manneh's father has thanked the GPU-USA for sending the family the sum of $500. "The money has been very helpful and your support does come in times of need," he said, adding, "sometimes it has been hard to provide food for the family." The remittances have provided an alternative source of income for some of the Manneh family's domestic expenses such as feeding and school fees for the kids.

This is the second year in a row that the US-based press union has been lending a supporting hand to the Manneh family. Last year, it disbursed a total of $1000; and this year, following a sustained fund-raising campaign, a similar humanitarian effort is being undertaken for the missing journalist's family. "We extend our profound appreciation to all those who contributed in cash or kind towards helping the Manneh family," the GPU-USA Secretary General Demba Baldeh remarked. He assured the Manneh family that the Union wouldn't rest until Chief Manneh's captors were brought to book and the family got some closure on his situation.

Last month, both Chief Manneh and the slain Point editor Deyda Hydara received the Hero of African Journalism Award from The African Editors Forum (TAEF). Wife Marie Piere Hydara and brother Musa Manneh received the awards on behalf of the respective families. The ceremony took place in Bamako, Mali.

Chief Ebrima Manneh was born in Lamin. He attended Nusrat High School. He was Daily Observer's State House correspondent at the time of his disappearance. "Chief was an ambitious, hardworking young man with extraordinary talents," his former colleague and now GPU-USA's Treasurer Lamin Jatta, wrote of him recently.

Cherno Baba Jallow is the Public Relations Officer of the Gambia Press Union/USA. He can be reached at: [log in to unmask]

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