The Gambia’s Justice Minister Abubacarr Tambadou has, in a parting message, told victims of human rights abuse that the country’s former dictator, Yahya Jammeh, will be brought to account someday [at home] or abroad.
Tambadou resigned from the Barrow government as attorney general and minister of justice to take up a new job at the United Nations, according to a government statement Thursday.
“To the victims of human rights violations and abuses during 22 years of Jammeh’s rule, you will get justice,” Tambadou said Friday in Banjul where he announced his resignation. Jammeh “will surely have his day in court”, he said.
He told journalists his resignation is “based on personal reasons” and didn’t speak on his supposed new appointment.
Mansa Banko Online understands he is appointed Registrar of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) which has offices in Arusha, Tanzania, and The Hague, in The Netherlands.
IRMCT performs a number of functions previously carried out by the now defunct U.N. courts – the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY).
The Mechanism maintains the legacies of these two pioneering ad hoc international criminal courts and strives to reflect best practices in international criminal justice, according to it’s website.
Tambadou’s appointment stemmed from his more than 10 years of experience prosecuting cases from Rwanda’s 1994 genocide at the ICTR which was shut down in 2015 when its mandate ended, according to Mansa Banko Online research.
Appointed justice minister in 2017, Tambadou, who is leaving office on June 30, is credited with initiating and leading The Gambia’s transitional justice policy and the implementation of its programmes.
He is known to have set up a truth commission digging into alleged crimes committed under Yahya Jammeh, an inquiry into Jammeh’s ill-gotten assets, and a more human-rights focused new supreme law (draft constitution).
Tambedou is also known to have defended women who came forward to accuse Jammeh of rape, helped the United States arrest one of Jammeh’s hit men, and made clear that if Jammeh returns to Gambia he would face justice.
“He has during this period destroyed the innocence and soul of Gambian society with the sheer brutality of his crimes,” he said of the former iron-fist ruler who forced HIV patients to follow his own treatment method.
Tambadou gained recognition as a “champion of human rights” after he launched The Gambia’s suit against Myanmar in November 2019 at the International Court of Justice – accusing the Asian-nation of committing “an ongoing genocide” against its minority Muslim Rohingya population.
In January, the court ruled in favour of The Gambia by ordering “provisional measures” to prevent further acts of genocide against the Rohingya.
“Abubacarr Tambadou was the right man at the right time for Gambia’s democratic transition,” Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch who works with the victims of Yahya Jammeh said.
“Tambadou stood up for abuse victims not only in his own country but thousands of miles away in Myanmar. [This] demonstrated the kind of international solidarity we don’t see very often these days,” Brody said.
Tambadou will be replaced by Dawda Jallow, a former magistrate and civic educator who studied international human rights law, Gambia’s presidency announced in a statement on June 25.
