BANJUL, GAMBIA – Youssfa Mbieh’s mother slowly pushes her wheelchair across the tiled grounds of her home in Kanifin, about 11 kilometers from Gambia’s capital Banjul. As the late afternoon sun hung low, she paused to fix the wrap around his leg and paused briefly to catch her breath.
“He’s been in this wheelchair since he was a teenager,” she told Al Jazeera, wiping away tears. “Twenty-six years later, I’m still taking care of him.”
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Mbie, now 42, was just 17 in April 2000 when Gambian paramilitary members opened fire on students protesting police brutality. At least 14 people were killed and dozens injured in one of the darkest episodes of former President Yahya Jammeh’s 22-year rule.
Mbie survived, but the bullet that hit him caused permanent damage to his spinal cord, leaving him unable to walk.
“At this stage in my life, I’m depressed,” he told Al Jazeera, reflecting on how that moment decades ago shaped and limited his life.
“I can’t do anything by myself without the help of my family.”
Mbie’s father, who supported him for many years, passed away in 2013. “My father wanted to see Mr. Jammeh brought to justice. He died without seeing that,” he said quietly.
Now, the elderly mother fears she too will die before the former government officials responsible for her son’s injuries are held accountable.
“As a mother, it’s hard to see my son in this condition,” she said. “I’m afraid I’ll die without him seeing justice.”
A country facing the past
Yahya Jammeh ruled Gambia from 1994 to 2017 after seizing power in a military coup. His government has since been accused of widespread human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings, torture, sexual violence, and enforced disappearances.
After Mr. Jammeh fled into exile in Equatorial Guinea in 2017, Gambia established the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC) to investigate crimes committed during Mr. Jammeh’s rule.
The commission documented thousands of violations, identified perpetrators and the crimes they committed, and issued a wide range of recommendations, including compensation to victims and criminal prosecution.
Some perpetrators have since been indicted, while others are in prison awaiting trial, and others, like Jammeh, are outside the country and outside the jurisdiction of local courts.
To implement the TRRC’s recommendations on compensation for victims, the government established a reparations commission and last month began making payments for abuses committed between 1994 and 2017.
Compensation will be issued in stages, starting with the earliest violation. The government has earmarked 40 million Dalas (approximately $550,000) for the program over five years.
Reparations Commission Chairman Badara Lum told Al Jazeera that reparations are a core part of Gambia’s transitional justice process.
But for many survivors, money is not the only justice.
“There can be no real justice while Jammeh is living comfortably abroad,” Mbie said.
Victims say what they need is for those responsible to answer for their crimes.
families living with loss
Mamdouh Sila and his family have been waiting for justice for decades.
His younger brother, cadet Amadou Shira, was one of nearly 20 soldiers executed in November 1994 after being accused of plotting a coup against Jammeh. The TRRC ultimately concluded that Amadou was not involved but was made a scapegoat.
“Even after 32 years, our wounds are still as fresh as if it happened yesterday,” the brother told Al Jazeera from his home in Madiana, about 35 kilometers from Banjul.
Amadou, who was 26 years old at the time of his death, was the family’s main breadwinner. Without the support of her older brother, Shira was forced to drop out of school and take a job at the age of 17 to help support her family.
“He was our hero,” the now 53-year-old said. “He took care of the whole family.”
Shira said that after Amadou’s execution, his family faced harassment and social isolation from the community, forcing them to leave their village and move to Madiana.
As part of the TRRC compensation process, the family received a payment of 600,000 Dalasis ($8,170), making them one of the first beneficiaries of the program. But Prime Minister Sila says money is no substitute for responsibility.
“Well, money is important,” he said. “But what we really want is justice. We want Jammeh and all those responsible for the murder of my brother to face justice.”
Coverage without closure
Mr Mbie was among those who received monetary compensation in 2020 as part of an interim disbursement by the TRRC. He received 19,000 Dalasis ($259) but returned the money.
“I needed treatment, not cash,” he said. “That amount won’t change anything for me.”
He said the TRRC once sent him and four other injured survivors to Turkiye for treatment, but that program was ended due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“To this day, I haven’t received the treatment I need,” he said, explaining that he needed a spinal replacement and surgery on his spine.
Mbie told Al Jazeera that President Adama Barrow promised to cover their medical costs when he took office in 2017.
“He said he would personally pay for our medical expenses. Ten years later, we still haven’t heard anything,” Mbie said.
Al Jazeera contacted the Gambian government about compensation and medical care for survivors, but did not receive a response.
Mr Mbie has returned his first payment but has since submitted details to the Compensation Commission and is awaiting new compensation. He says all he needs is treatment to help him walk again.
when justice is too late
While survivors wait for answers, some victims of Jammeh-era abuses have not lived to receive compensation or fulfill their responsibilities.
There were numerous political restraints under the previous government. Deaths in custody are not systematically recorded, but some prisoners, such as prominent opposition leader Ebrima Solo Sandeng, were killed. For those released and their families, it has been a journey of recovery and accountability.
Femi Peters is a political activist who was jailed for organizing 2009 pro-democracy rallies calling for electoral reform during the Jammeh regime. At the time, Amnesty International warned that he was at risk of human rights abuses and campaigned for his release.
Peters was released in 2010 and spent the following years awaiting trial. However, he ultimately passed away in 2018 while waiting under the new administration. His son, Olufemi Peters, said the loss still shapes their lives.
“No amount of compensation can bring my father back,” he told Al Jazeera. “The only solution is for those responsible to be held accountable.”
Similarly, Nogoi Njie was arrested, tortured, and imprisoned in 2016 after participating in peaceful protests against Jammeh’s rule. She passed away in 2023.
His daughter, Isatou Sisay, said the state’s delay in holding Jammeh and others accountable remains devastating.
“It hurt me deeply that my mother died without seeing justice,” she said. “I feel that justice comes too late.”
The Gambia Center for Victims of Human Rights Violations announced that more than a dozen victims of the Jammeh era have died while awaiting justice for the abuses they suffered.
Chairman Lum said next of kin are entitled to receive compensation on their behalf.
hold Jammeh accountable
Bringing Jammeh to justice remains a complex challenge.
He has been living in exile in Equatorial Guinea since 2017, beyond the reach of Gambian courts. Not much is known about his life there, but he occasionally sends WhatsApp voice messages to his supporters back home.
His party, the Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC), continues to enjoy significant support. Although the former president does not have much political influence in The Gambia, some sections of society, particularly in his home region, argue that he has committed no crimes and should be allowed to live freely.
Still, momentum is gradually growing to hold him accountable.
In 2024, Gambia passed a law creating a Special Prosecution Service and a Special Accountability Mechanism. The aim is to prosecute the crimes identified by the TRRC and hold the main perpetrators, including Jammeh, accountable. Sanna Manjan, one of the executioners responsible for most of the killings. Yankuba Touray is a former Jammeh ally already serving a life sentence. Some remain fugitives in The Gambia, such as former Vice President Isatou Ngiy Saidi.
With support from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the country is also establishing a hybrid ad hoc tribunal with Gambian and international judges that will try perpetrators of rights violations, including Mr. Jammeh, should he return to Gambia.
Separately, an international court has also filed a lawsuit. In 2023, Switzerland sentenced former interior minister Ousmane Sonko to 20 years in prison on charges including torture. Courts in Germany and the United States have also convicted former members of Jammeh’s Junglers paramilitary group, including Bai Low, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2022.
Keba Jomeh, director of the Gambia Center for Victims of Human Rights Violations, which provides psychosocial support and legal advocacy to victims, said the court had brought new hope among survivors.
“We are grateful to ECOWAS for supporting this effort,” he told Al Jazeera. “Victims must remain at the center of the judicial process.”
Established in 2017, the center has registered more than 1,500 victims. Many of their photos line the walls, a vivid reminder of the country’s past.
But Jome acknowledged that for some, justice is already too late.
“The deaths of victims awaiting accountability demonstrate how delays in justice can fail survivors,” he said.
Human rights lawyer Imran Darbo also welcomed the start of reparations, but warned that reparations cannot replace justice.
“Compensation is very welcome,” he told Al Jazeera. “But without transparency, engagement and dignity, reparations risks becoming a transaction rather than a path to healing.”
Darbo said there is a growing push for accountability both domestically and internationally.
“Justice may be slow, but Jammeh is surrounded by mechanisms of accountability. Exile is not impunity,” he said.
still waiting
According to the Reparations Commission, the TRRC identified 1,009 victims eligible for compensation. Of these, 248 received full compensation and 707 received partial payments.
Many families are still waiting, including those of 54 West African migrants who were arrested in Gambia on their way to Europe in 2005 and executed by Jammeh’s junglers.
For Shira, whose brother died as a result of false and unjust accusations, closure remains incomplete.
In 2019, the government exhumed the bodies of soldiers executed in 1994, including Amadou Sylla. However, the body is still kept at a morgue in Banjul, pending use as evidence in future court proceedings.
“We want to give our brother a proper burial,” Shira told Al Jazeera, lamenting that even his mother, who died in 2024, is still waiting. “We want closure,” he said.
As The Gambia continues its fragile transition from dictatorship to democracy, survivors say the country’s fight now is to confront its past before time runs out.
As the cool night sets in, Mbie sits quietly as his mother prepares to drive him home.
“People keep saying justice is coming,” he said quietly. “But I wonder if it will ever arrive?”
