MFDC rebel leader, Salif Sadio, has said the captured Senegalese soldiers serving with ECOMIG will be released if the regional bloc Ecowas meet certain undisclosed conditions. 

The separatist leader was speaking to a group of Gambian and Senegalese journalists yesterday (6 February) in the jungle of Casamance where the seven soldiers in their military uniforms were paraded with their hands in cuffs. 

They were captured last week during a shootout with the separatist rebels along The Gambia’s southern border with Senegal. 

Four other Senegalese soldiers were killed during the deadly shootout. 

The MFDC leader said he is willing to engage Ecowas officials if they reach out to him for the release of the captured soldiers.

He refused to tell journalists his conditions for the soldiers release. 

The soldiers are serving with the Ecowas military forces in The Gambia and where stationed in Foni. 

He said: “The captured soldiers are men of Ecowas and they came to attack me and my men. 

“The men we held hostage are those who survive the fight and if we have given them food to eat or not, I will not tell you that but they will tell you that because I am a leader and I don’t want to lie. 

“They are war prisoners and they were having heavy weapons and they came to fight us and we captured them. And now if we are to let them off, we must talk, they will tell you if they are given food to eat or not or if they are in good condition or not.”

“The people who came to fight us were the men of Ecowas in our country and we fought them back to where they came from and we held some of them as war prisoners with their heavy weapons and some of them died. 

“We seized many of their weapons. We returned the corpses because we know that only the children of the poor people are dying here in the bush because none of the Senegalese presidents’ sons or their close relatives died here.

“Their release will be based on conditions, if they fulfil the conditions they will be released and if not they will not be released. the conditions will entail it. 

“Let me tell you if they were after a truckload with timber, they would not have come with heavy machine guns but they came with heavy guns. 

“And those we captured were fighters who were armed with dangerous guns and they first attacked us and we fought them from dawn to dusk before they retreated and I recalled my troops for the sake of the children and poor people on the border.

He added: “When the Gambian authorities came here, we gave them the dead bodies to take back home because I don’t need those corpses. I am not fighting with Ecowas and I am not fighting with The Gambia.

“We returned the corpses because we know that only the children of the poor people are dying here in the bush because none of the Senegalese presidents’ sons or their close relatives died here.”

Reporting by Adama Makasuba