Gambia’s Supreme Court has commuted the death sentence of a government minister convicted of killing the finance minister to life imprisonment. 

This is one of the few to be convicted of crimes committed during the 22-year rule of ex-dictator Yahya Jammeh.

The case has been closely watched in the tiny West African nation as a rare example of accountability for Jammeh-era crimes and also as a test case for a years-long moratorium on capital punishment.

The ruling announced on Tuesday upheld the verdict against Yankuba Touray for the murder in 1995 of Ousman Koro Ceesay, but judges ruled Mr Touray would be spared hanging and instead serve out a life term in a prison outside the capital, Banjul.

A Gambian commission in 2021 recommended prosecutions for the killings, torture and other abuses under Mr Jammeh, who is in exile in Equatorial Guinea after fleeing the country following his election loss to current President Adama Barrow in 2016.

The Gambia has observed a moratorium on capital punishment since 2018. Though courts have handed down several death sentences for crimes committed under Mr Jammeh, who ruled the West African country for 22 years after seizing power in a 1994 coup, none has been carried out.

The sentences have, however, ignited debate in Gambia over the use of capital punishment.

Gambia’s former spy chief and four other ex-intelligence officials were sentenced to death in 2022 for the 2016 killing of activist and Jammeh critic, Solo Sandeng.

A handful of other cases around the world have seen convictions of Jammeh-era officials.

In 2024, a Swiss court convicted former Gambian government minister Ousman Sonko of crimes against humanity under Mr Jammeh and jailed him for 20 years in a historic verdict using universal jurisdiction in Europe.

In the U.S. on Tuesday, a jury convicted a man accused of torture while working for “The Junglers,”a feared Jammeh-era armed group. 

(Reuters/NAN)