By Kaddy Jawo
Alieu Badara Sowe, a former reporter at the Daily Observer, and Point Newspapers, on Monday, told the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC) that he was arrested, stripped naked and paraded outside in the street like a criminal by five personnel of the defunct National Intelligence Agency (NIA). He told the commissioners that his tormentors humiliated and assaulted him verbally to inflict maximum psychological trauma.
“When they picked me up from the Daily Observer, they started tormenting me and using all kinds of words on our way to NIA office in Banjul.”
Sowe, who now resides and works in the United Kingdom, said when they arrived at the NIA headquarters after his arrest by the state agents, they threw and locked him in a mosquito infested-room where he spent his time in detention. He said that they provided him with no food or water but instead they gave him a bucket to use for a toilet during the four days he was held incommunicado.
The 51-year-old said when he woke up the next morning, he saw that all the walls were stained with blood which indicated to him right away that he was being detained in a torture chamber of the NIA. Sowe said that the NIA never told him the reason they detained him “for but instead keep on tormenting me with abusive words and I was really fed up.”
In his testimony, Sowe recollected during the night of his detention, at around 3AM, the five men came into the detention room highly drunk. He told the commissioners that they stayed for hours in his cell banging on the table and doors which scared him to death.
Sowe said after the drunk NIA agents gained sobriety, they ended their dramas for more serious business when they asked him to work as an undercover agent for the state agency. He disclosed to the commissioners that he told his captors that he was not interested in working for the NIA. He said that he was released from the NIA after few days without any charges filed against him. Sowe said after he was set free, he went back to the Daily Observer to resume writing as a reporter. That experience was not his last with operatives of the notorious state agency.
He also recounted his second encounter with NIA agents who arrested him the second time. That time around, he said he was on his way to visiting a friend when he redirected that mission to enquire about an altercation between some police officers and a group of civilians at the Buffer Zone. He said upon his arrival at the scene of the commotion, members of the NIA arrested, bundled and transported him to Kairaba Police Station where they locked him for two days. He said few days after he was released from detention, the management of the Daily Observer Newspaper sacked him from his job as a senior reporter at the news organization.