A 70-year-old man has detailed his traumatic experiences with a group of so-called witch hunters during the former president Jammeh’s infamous nationwide clampdown on alleged ‘witches’ in 2009.

Saineyba Bojang, a native of Jamburr, told the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission that he was rounded up with other villagers by a group of so-called witch doctors who accused them of “witchcraft”.

He said they were taken to a treatment centre in Kololi where they were made to drink concoctions to “cure them of the evil act”.

He said the concoction made them drunk and acted in strange ways.

“I used to jump to get hold of the bulb and that is the time when they caught me. As you are telling me I was seeing the bulb – it was strange for me because I was unconscious and I didn’t know what was happening,” he told the Commission.

He said they were told that they were being taken for treatment “but actually they didn’t do what they told us instead they intoxicated, and there was no one who drank the concoction that was not intoxicated”.

Mr. Bojang said he now experienced difficulties with his sights and ‘sporadic blood shortage’ due to the concoction he drank at the treatment centre in Kololi.

He revealed that some of his fellow victims died after the ordeal.

“We all didn’t survive, the medicine killed some people including Dembo Jarreng, Wassa Camara, Bureng Korta, Momou Kumba, Lamin Dandangba.”

In 2009, former President Yahya Jammeh launched a nationwide witch hunt after the unexplained deaths of his his aunt and two of his bodyguards.

A team of so-called witch doctors from Guinea, with the support of police and armed soldiers, were tasked with finding out the alleged “witches and sorcerers”

Poor farming communities and public offices were targeted.

Jamburr village was one of the many affected communities. Witnesses have testified this week from the village and had linked the deaths of eleven people to the infamous witch hunt ten years ago.

Reporting by Adama Makasuba