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The Gambia will use US$2.5 million received from the United States following the sale of former president Yahya Jammeh’s property to compensate victims of his rule, authorities have said.
The Gambia’s Reparations Commission said it had received $2.5 million from the sale of a mansion in Maryland owned by the former leader.
The BBC reports that the United States secured the right to sell the property in 2022 on grounds that it had been acquired through “criminal proceeds and misappropriated Gambian public funds”.
On Tuesday, the Gambia Reparations Commission said it was “pleased to inform victims, survivors and the public that it has received a total of $2,573,414.10” from the sale of Jammeh’s property.
It said it was committed to ensuring the funds were managed responsibly and transparently, “with due regard to the rights and needs of victims and survivors”.
Jammeh ruled The Gambia for more than 20 years after taking power in a 1994 coup, a period marked by allegations of human rights abuses, forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.
He lost the 2016 election to Adama Barrow, initially accepting defeat before rejecting the results.
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Jammeh eventually stepped down in 2017 amid intense regional and international pressure, after troops from several West African countries, including Senegal, were deployed and threatened to force him out of office.
He went into exile in Equatorial Guinea.
A national commission later found that the former president owned 281 properties in The Gambia, as well as one in the United States and another in Morocco, and controlled more than 100 bank accounts.
The commission concluded that Jammeh had misappropriated more than $300 million, an amount it said he could not have afforded on his presidential salary.
Jammeh has been accused of presiding over the murder of political opponents, disappearances, rape and torture.
A commission of inquiry found that widespread abuses had resulted in the deaths of “240-250 Gambians and non-Gambians at the hands of the state or its agents”.
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