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Gambia’s ex-president, Yahya Jammeh, has come under fire after three women came forward with accusations that he raped them while in power.
Jammeh is accused of carrying out a series of rapes and sexual assaults at his private residence, where his aides allegedly pressured women to visit him, according to a statement from Human Rights Watch, a global advocacy group for victims of abuse and crime.
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“Yahya Jammeh treated Gambian women like his personal property,” Reed Brody, of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement, CNN reports. “Rape and sexual assault are crimes, and Jammeh is not above the law.”
The accusations came to light Tuesday in a New York Times interview with one of the alleged victims. 23-year-old former beauty queen Fatou Jallow shared her story with the publication, revealing that she was raped by the ex-President after she refused to marry him, the BBC reports. Her testimony is part of a Human Rights Watch and Trial International report of the alleged rapes and sexual assaults committed by Jammeh.
Jallow said her ordeal began when Jammeh summoned the pageant winner to Gambia’s statehouse, and eventually asked for her hand in marriage. She said no.
“I thought it was a joke,’’ Jallow says. “I was very naïve. I didn’t know how brutal he was.”
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When summoned yet again for what she thought was an event to celebrate Ramadan, she claims he raped her.
“Reality hit me that this is my new identity,’’ she said. “I’m just this girl the president will call and pick up and rape. Everything I wanted to be, every potential and reason why I even went into this competition, all of that was shoved into the dumpster.”
Jammeh became president of the West African nation in 1994 after he took power in a military coup but suffered an election defeat to Adama Barrow in December 2016. He is currently living in exile in Equatorial Guinea.
A spokesman for Jammeh’s Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction Party (APRC) denied the accusations made against him. In a statement to CNN, Ousman Rambo Jatta, the Deputy leader of the APRC, said allegations of rape had “no iota of truth.”
Meanwhile, human rights advocates are collecting testimonies about Jammeh’s abuses so that he can be brought to trial.
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