Gambian torture victims testify in Denver against member of former dictator’s military

Suspected of backing a coup plot against the longtime dictator of Gambia nearly 20 years ago, Pharing Sanyang described in a Denver courtroom Thursday how he was beaten with pipes and palm tree branches, pistol-whipped and hit in the face with a hammer.

Particles from the sandy ground of a courtyard in the West African nation where the military officer fell during one of the 2006 beatings lodged in his eyes, causing damage requiring several surgeries, he testified.

Sanyang, a former military officer in Gambia, took the stand in U.S. District Court in Denver against one of the former soldiers he said beat him — Michael Sang Correa.

Correa is on trial in after being indicted in 2020 under a rarely used law that allows people to be prosecuted in the U.S. judicial system for torture allegedly committed abroad.

He is charged with torturing Sanyang and four others and being part of a conspiracy to torture alleged coup plotters while serving with the Junglers, a military unit that reported directly to former Gambian president Yahya Jammeh.

Sanyang told jurors he eventually agreed to sign a false confession but wiped blood from his head onto the paper to show he had been tortured. Then, after refusing to confess on television, he was shocked with wires plugged into a wall socket and beaten again, he said.

Bleeding, he read his confession for the television camera, but only the audio was recorded to conceal the torture, he told the court.

“I had to save my body,” Sanyang said of why he agreed to confess, adding he did not join the failed insurrection against Jammeh, who ousted the previous president of Gambia in a coup of his own in 1994.

Sanyang spent nearly a decade in prison after being convicted of treason and fled to nearby Senegal after his release.

Correa came to the U.S. to serve as a bodyguard for Jammeh in December 2016 and overstayed his visa after Jammeh was ousted in 2017, according to prosecutors. Since sometime after arriving, Correa had been living in Denver and working as a day laborer, they said.

Sanyang and other alleged victims traveled from Gambia, Europe and elsewhere in the U.S. to testify this week about their torture. Prosecutors showed the jury photos of victims with scars left by things including a bayonet, a burning cigarette and ropes. The men were asked to circle scars on photos and explain how they received them.

Correa’s lawyers have not disputed that the defendant was involved in Sanyang’s torture even though Sanyang said Correa, like the other Junglers, was wearing a face mask. Sanyang said he knew Correa from working with him at the president’s official home and recognized his “walking gait.”

But his lawyers argue Correa was a low-ranking private who risked being tortured himself or even killed if he refused Jammeh’s orders.

Demba Dem testified Wednesday that his torturers put a black plastic shopping bag over his head and beat him as he was handcuffed.

Another time, they put a heavy bag of sand on his back and then held a piece of hot metal close to his nose. Then they hung him upside down, his wrists and ankles tied, beating him again.

The former teacher who became a member of the Gambian parliament as part of Jammeh’s political party said Correa used a stick to beat him.

Dem, who said he was not part of the planned coup, later moved to the Netherlands with his family after seeking asylum and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He was reluctant to talk on the witness stand about the impact the torture had on his life other than saying it was “very bad” and asking a prosecutor to move on.

Still, Dem said he was “happy” to be in court to try to hold one of his abusers accountable.