The World Today
The United States court has sentenced a Gambian citizen to 67 and a half years in prison, accused of forming an armed unit under the command of former dictator Yahya Jammeh and found guilty of torture last April by a US jury, the country's Department of Justice announced on Friday.
Specifically, Colorado District Judge Christine Arguello sentenced 46-year-old Michael Sang Correa to 810 months in prison for participating in acts of torture committed in 2006. These acts included "repeated brutal beatings," burnings, and electrocutions, among others, in retaliation for the victims' alleged involvement in an attempted coup against the then-president.
This case represents the first criminal prosecution against a member of the armed group known as "The Junglers," which operated in Gambia during Jammeh's authoritarian regime.
"The jury found that, as Jungler, Correa conspired with others to commit torture and personally tortured five victims, all of whom were targeted for suspected conspiracy against Jammeh," the Justice Department statement added, which includes testimony from victims of Correa's actions and those of his accomplices, who transferred the victims to Mile 2 Prison—the main prison in Gambia—in March 2006, shortly after a failed coup attempt.
At the end of 2016, ten years after these crimes, Correa obtained a visa to enter the United States, where he managed to evade justice until 2019, when ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) arrested him and began deportation proceedings against him.
In 2020, he was charged with torture, marking the first conviction of a non-US citizen on federal torture charges, although former Gambian President Jammeh has consistently denied that torture took place during his time in office (1994–2016).
