A Ghanaian national identified as Mr. Kofi is reported to have been arrested and is currently being detained by the Gambia's notorious intelligence agency, NIA. Kofi is said to be the coordinator of Atlantic TV based in the UK and that he was in the Gambia to arrange for the opening of an affiliate station in Banjul.
According to our sources at the NIA, Kofi was arrested on July 19 by officers of the National Intelligence Agency at a guest house in the compound of the President's Award Scheme near the national Independence stadium in the city of Bakau. Kofi,
our NIA sources added, arrived in the Gambia from Ghana in April and has since been promoting the new TV station that was supposedly to be opened.
Adverts for the new TV station were allegedly carried in the local papers looking for reporters, editors and camera men. NIA sources said may people responded to the ads but they were asked to pay D700 for the processing fee. The NIA are saying the Ghanaian man was illegally operating in the country without approvals from the state department of Communications, Information and Technology.
One of the applicants (name withheld) told Senegambia News that he was called by one Alhagi Ngum, an NIA officer from the the headquarters in Banjul asking him to report to the NIA on July 19, 2007. He said when he asked Ngum why he was being called to the agency, he was told that the coordinator of the TV program was in their custody and that he [the applicant] was being asked to get his documents.
Although the Ghanaian national is alleged to have been operating illegally in the Gambia, some believe he was suspected of being a private investigator digging into the brutal killings of fifty west African nationals including forty-four Ghanaians by Gambian security forces in 2005. Gambia government is currently under pressure to cooperate with Ghanaian investigators to establish the cause of the killings of their unarmed citizens who had legal rights to enter Gambia under ECOWAS protocols to which the Gambia is signatory.
