August 23rd, 2020
Headsman
On this date in 2012, the small west African country of Gambia suddenly shot nine.
Effectively abolitionist, Gambia had not exercised capital punishment since 1981, when an attempted coup led to one (1) execution.
But it did have a (seemingly) latent death row of close to 50 souls* and in August 2012 autocratic president Yahya Jammeh used that stockpile to suddenly break the death penalty moratorium with a shock mass execution.
Those executed included one woman, at least two Senegalese nationals, and several soldiers involved in anti-Jammeh mutinies. The nine were identified as
Dawda Bojang
Malang Sonko
Lamin Jarjou
Alieu Bah
Lamin F. Jammeh
Buba YarboeLamin B.S Darboe
Gebe Bah (Senegalese)
Tabara Samba (Senegalese, female)
As might be expected for such an impetuous deed, several of these individuals so suddenly killed were not even at the end of their legal journeys through the state’s regular channels. Buba Yarboe’s family had been fighting for recognition of his mental illness as a mitigating condition; Yarboe and Malang Sonko both had judicial appeals remaining that had not yet been heard; Lamin Darboe’s sentence had been irregularly vacated and then reinstated. No matter.
Jammeh backed off his threats of follow-up executions to purge the entirety of its death row, and Gambia has conducted no further executions since that one dark day. His successor Adama Barrow officially re-imposed a moratorium and in 2019 commuted all remaining death sentences with an avowed intention to abolish capital punishment altogether.
* Reports on the size of Gambia’s death row at this time varied. The UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions named 39 still-living condemned individuals in a letter to President Jammeh days after the nine were killed.
On this day..
Entry Filed under: 21st Century,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Execution,Gambia,Mass Executions,Milestones,Murder,Mutiny,Shot,Soldiers,Women,Wrongful Executions
Tags: 2010s, 2012, adama barrow, alieu bah, august 23, buba yarboe, dawda bojang, gebe bah, lamin darboe, lamin jammeh, lamin jarjou, malang sonko, tabara samba, yahya jammeh
September 30th, 2013
Headsman
On this date in 1981, Mustapha Danso was executed for an attempted coup in Gambia.
Gambia (or “The Gambia”: we’re going to dispense with the article here) is a sliver of a country hugging the Gambia River, entirely surrounded (save the coast) by Senegal.
It became independent of Great Britain in 1970 under the leadership of Dawda Jawara, who held the Gambian presidency democratically from that time until 1994. Mustapha Danso, our date’s principal, was one of a coterie of disaffected Gambian junior officers who were scheming a coup against Jawara as the 1980s got underway.
In October 1980, Danso walked up to the deputy commander of the Gambia Field Force, Eku Mahoney, and coolly shot him dead. “Although the first speculations blamed the constable’s action on possible illicit drug influence,” notes a book about Gambia’s subsequent, and successful, 1994 junior officers’ coup, “Mustapha Danso’s unresentful attitude after the incident convinced many people that there was more to it than what met the eye.” Mahoney may have been killed because he was viewed by the prospective coupists as an obstacle.
Danso caught a death sentence, but since Gambia never actually executed anyone, it was essentially symbolic.
That is, until July 1981, when Jawara was in London to attend the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. Danso’s former comrades in the Field Force seized the opportunity to join a coup mounted by leftist politician Kukoi Samba Sanyang against the “corrupt, tribalistic, and despotic” Jawara in favor of “the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
From London, Jawara summoned Senegalese aid: Gambia’s neighbor and sometime rival dispatched troops who successfully crushed the rebellion within a week. Some 500 people lost their lives during the turmoil, and its leaders fled abroad. (Kukoi Sanyang died a few months ago as of this writing, but his version of the “people’s revolution under my able leadership” can be perused here.)
While the coup itself was suppressed, Jawara went pretty easy (as these things go) on his actual or perceived enemies. Danso was the only party to the plot who was executed, and Jawara went out of his way to declare normalcy instead of using a national security emergency to smash up everything.
“In the aftermath of this threat to our internal security some have asked whether it would be appropriate at the time to consolidate both the power of the State and the power of the executive. Let me state categorically and unequivocally that the system of democracy that has always existed will prevail. There will be no dictatorship in The Gambia — neither by the President, nor by the Government, nor by the proletariat.” (Source)
Danso was the first and, for 30 years the only, person executed in Gambia; the country has retained the death penalty in law, but was long considered de facto abolitionist. That changed suddenly in August 2012 when current president Yahya Jammeh unexpectedly ordered nine condemned prisoners put to death on a single day.
On this day..
- 1921: Fanya Baron, anarchist lioness - 2020
- 1915: Cerkez Ahmed, disposable fanatic - 2019
- 1921: Carl Wanderer, of the Ragged Stranger case - 2018
- 324 B.C.E.: Glaucias, negligent physician - 2017
- 1946: Takashi Sakai - 2016
- 1567: The Michelade of Nimes - 2015
- 1724: Christian George, Peter Rombert, Peter Dutartre, and Michael Boneau - 2014
- 1927: Huibrecht Jacob de Leeuw, dynamiter - 2012
- 1814: Mary Antoine, jealous lover - 2011
- 1860: Juan Rafael Mora Porras, President of Costa Rica - 2010
- 1630: John Billington, signer of the Mayflower Compact - 2009
- 1952: George Muldowney, for loving and killing the original Bond girl - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Execution,Gambia,Hanged,History,Milestones,Murder,Revolutionaries,Soldiers
Tags: 1980s, 1981, coup d'etat, dawda jawara, kukoi sanyang, mustapha danso, september 30
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