Journalists in the Gambia still live in fear of authorities who have allowed continuing impunity to the killers of Deyda Hydara, co-founder of the Point, four years after his murder on December 16, 2004.
Hydara, who was also correspondent for Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Reporters sans Frontières (RSF), was shot dead by unidentified gunmen from a taxi as he was driving his car in an outlying district of capital Banjul.
“The few public promises made by the Gambian authorities in this case are smokescreens that fail to hide the obvious contempt in which President Yahya Jammeh holds journalists," RSF said. “In truth, the aim of the killers of Deyda Hydara was to silence Gambians by submitting them to fear of the 'president’s men'. Only a campaign by those who do not live with this fear can make this plan fail."
In the weeks after the killing, RSF, which carried out its own investigation, made public its strong suspicion of the Gambian security services and in particular the 'Green Boys', a semi-clandestine group of partisans of the Gambian president.
There were several reasons for believing that Hydara was targetted to silence fierce criticism regularly levelled at the government by the journalist.
The police investigation promised by the Gambian authorities went nowhere. The only official report, sent to the press by the Gambian intelligence services in 2005, was “confidential," outlining several leads, most of them allegedly absurd, which were supposedly intended to shed light on the circumstances of the killings.
Since that date, most of the key witnesses to the case have disappeared, including the then director of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Daba Marenah, of whom nothing more has been heard since he was arrested after being implicated in an alleged coup attempt.
The Gambian press, reduced to a few privately-owned newspapers under close government scrutiny is trying to survive in a climate in which the least incident is severely punished, according to RSF. Arbitrary arrest, threats and police brutality are now commonplace in a country ruled by a head of state who in several interviews has expressed his contempt and distrust for the media.
