People have been sitting on death row for years. President Jawara never had the slightest inclination to sign a death warrant, except in the case of Mustapha Danso in 1981. What baffles Gambians, and what they find so traumatic is that not one, but nine death row inmates were lined up and executed. And why now?

 

There is something that is built in the Gambian pysche, our social and cultural mindset that is anathemic to murder; to killings of any sort. Our ingrained value systems has inbuilt social and cultural mechanisms, that makes these social aberations, if not uncommon, farfethched. It is only now that murder and killing is becoming widespread and prevalent. Most of us growing up in Gambia can faintly recall the number of people murdered or killed before 1981. There cannot be any justification for signing a death warrant to kill people who had been sentence to death, rather than to live them to spent the rest of their lives in prison.

 

The position of the group of six is valid. They want to highlight the legality of the death sentence as enshined in the constitution. Now that it has become a national issue,  our outrage should not only be confined to protest, but there should also be a determined effort to guide a national dialogue whether we want the death penalty or life imprisonment for capital punishment. I think this is the case they are trying to make.