The Gambia Supreme Court has made a landmark ruling in a case involving Amadou Sanneh, a former minister of Trade and national treasurer of the United Democratic Party (UDP).

Mr Sanneh and others including the UDP leader, Ousainou Darboe, were pardoned by President Adama Barrow on 30th January 2017.

Amadou Sanneh had brought an appeal to the Supreme Court arguing that his conviction should be quashed and expunged from the criminal records as he had been pardoned.

However in a landmark ruling over the week, the Gambia’s Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Hassan Jallow ruled that Mr Sanneh’s appeal had no merit and that he was still a convict.

“Pardon is no sense the equivalent of an acquittal. The effect of the pardon is prospective and not retrospective. It does not change the past and cannot annihilate the established fact that the Appellant was convicted of the offence. For all intents and purposes, the fact of the conviction remains untouched and the criminal record is not erased,” the ruling stated.

The judges said that the 1997 Constitution did not give the President “the prerogative of justice, but only a prerogative of mercy which, cannot remove a conviction, but, only pardons.”

The judges said: “by virtue of section 120 of the 1997 Constitution, the judicial power of The Gambia is vested in the courts and shall be exercised by them according to the respective jurisdictions conferred on them by law.

“Thus, only the courts with the appellate jurisdictions have the power to quash a conviction. It follows, therefore, that a pardon is not a substitute for judicial reversal of the Appellant’s (Amadou Sanneh’s) conviction.”

Amadou Sanneh was sentenced to five years imprisonment in December 2013, for his role in supporting asylum applications of some Gambians.

Mr Sanneh was released from Mile Two Prison in January 2017 by a presidential pardon after serving three of his five-year imprisonment term.

Amadou Sanneh, Malang Fatty and Sambou Fatty, were convicted and sentenced to five years imprisonment on two counts relating to sedition.

Mr Sanneh was accused of issuing ‘malicious documents’ to facilitate asylum for Malang and Sambou Fatty.

He denied the allegation but the then High Court Judge, Justice Emmanuel Nkea, found him guilty and sentenced him to five years in jail.