German court upholds conviction of Gambian national for crimes against humanity
The German Federal Court of Justice announced on November 29, 2024 that it had rejected the appeal of a former member of a Gambian death squad who was sentenced to life imprisonment a year ago for his participation in two murders and three attempted murders, constituting crimes against humanity. This was the first trial in history to be held under the principle of universal jurisdiction for international crimes committed under former Gambian President Yahya Jammeh.
On November 30, 2023, Bai Lowe was convicted by the Higher Regional Court of Celle, Lower Saxony, of the attempted murder of lawyer Ousman Sillah in 2003, the murder of journalist Deyda Hydara and the attempted murder of two of his colleagues in 2004, and the murder of former soldier Dawda Nyassi in 2006. This was the first time that a court had recognized that crimes against humanity had been committed in The Gambia under the presidency of Yahya Jammeh, all thanks to the exercise of universal jurisdiction.
The defendant appealed to the Federal Court of Justice to examine whether the November 2023 conviction had been handed down in accordance with the law, and the Court found “no error of law prejudicial to the defendant”. In its decision of November 12, 2024, it therefore upheld the conviction, which is now final. “This decision shows that in Germany, even complex crimes committed abroad can be solved and brought to trial. It underlines the importance of the German International Criminal Code for the prosecution of the most serious crimes against human rights“, commented Peer Stolle, lawyer for one of the plaintiffs.
This conviction and its confirmation mark a turning point in the fight against impunity for atrocities committed under the presidency of Yahya Jammeh, who was in power in The Gambia between 1994 and 2016. The German proceedings have confirmed the existence of systematic and widespread attacks against the civilian population, orchestrated by Jammeh to maintain himself in power through violence. These decisions are therefore of major significance, not only for the four plaintiffs in the trial, but also for all the victims and survivors of the crimes committed under this regime. The Bai Lowe trial exposed one of the notorious tools of this repression: the role of the “Junglers”, a paramilitary unit created by the former President to suppress all forms of opposition.
“The confirmation of Bai Lowe’s conviction by the German Supreme Court is an important step in ongoing and future criminal prosecutions against the senior officials and principals of these crimes abroad, particularly in Switzerland and the United States, but especially in The Gambia,” commented Babaka Tracy Mputu, Legal Advisor at TRIAL International. TRIAL International and its partner ECCHR had informed the German Federal Prosecutor’s Office in 2019 of Bai Lowe‘s presence on the territory. Following his arrest in Germany in 2021, TRIAL International passed on additional information to the German prosecuting authorities and provided logistical and psychological support to the plaintiffs during the trial.
In May 2024, the application of universal jurisdiction also enabled Switzerland to bring to trial and sentence in first instance former Gambian Interior Minister Ousman Sonko, Yahya Jammeh’s former right-hand man, also for crimes against humanity committed between 2000 and 2006, to 20 years imprisonment.[1] In April 2025, the trial of Michael Correa, another alleged former member of the Junglers, is due to open in Denver, USA. He was indicted in June 2020 for the torture of individuals suspected of plotting a coup d’état in 2006.
TRIAL International now hopes that, at its next meeting in December, the Conference of Heads of State and Government of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) will give a favorable opinion on the creation of a special international tribunal for The Gambia, so that the crimes of the Jammeh era can be judged as close as possible to where they were committed.
