Under the hostile environment of Jammeh’s regime two Gambian journalists, Abubacarr Saidykhan and Baboucarr Ceesay recalled receiving a death threat via email in 2012 after requesting a protest permit.

“Tobaski warning, choose life or dead” was the title of the email issued to them, the reporters told the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission on Wednesday July 10.

“They asked me that if you spend another two weeks here consider yourself a dead person,” Saidykhan recalled the petrifying tone of the email.

Abubacarr Saidykhan and Baboucarr Ceesay said they were arrested at the Police headquarters in Banjul after they were asked to pick up their protest permit.

Mr Saidykhan told the Truth Commission that during their arrests, both he and his colleague, Mr Ceesay, had their houses ransacked as police carried out searches for “evidence” against them.

He said there was an evidence in a black nylon bag, but the Police couldn’t locate the position of the nylon bag.

After receiving the death threat email, Mr Abubacarr Saidykhan fled into exile in Senegal to save his life.

And he said he returned to The Gambia after former president Yahya Jammeh was ousted in 2017.

The TRRC sitting continues.

Reporting by Adama Makasuba