Gambia’s ex-minister convicted for crimes against humanity by Swiss court

Switzerland’s top criminal court on Wednesday (15 May) fund a former Gambian interior minister guilty of crimes against humanity over his role in repression committed by the West African country’s security forces under former dictator Yahya Jammeh.
After four months of hearing, the Swiss court in Bellinzona sentenced Ousman Sonko, Gambia’s government minister from 2006 to 2016, to 20 years in prison, according to TRIAL International, a Geneva-based non-governmental organization supporting the plaintiffs. Reed Brody, a war crimes prosecutor attending the trial, said Sonko was convicted of intentional homicide, torture and false imprisonment but acquitted for rape. The ruling will likely be appealed considering that Sonko’s lawyers had argued for his acquittal during the trial and demanded financial compensation for the years spent in detention.
Sonko, in custody ever since his arrest in January 2017, is the highest-ranking official ever to be tried in Europe under “universal jurisdiction” which allows the most serious crimes to be prosecuted anywhere. Sonko applied for asylum in Switzerland in November 2016 following his sacking from the West African nation’s government and was arrested two months later. “This unprecedented conviction based on universal jurisdiction in Europe is the confirmation that no one is above the reach of justice,” Meystre Benoit, a legal advisor for TRIAL International, said in a text message. “Even the most powerful figures can be brought to account for their participation in mass atrocities.”