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| Foday Momodou Hydara |
By Ousman A. Marong
Foday Momodou Hydara, former Deputy Director General
(DDG) of the defunct National Intelligence Agency (NIA) now State Intelligence Services
(SIS), adduced before the Truth Reconciliation and Reparation Commission (TRRC)
that the NIA were focusing on spying political opponents of former President
Yahya Jammeh.
Hydara, who worked at the NIA for a long time before
becoming its head, admitted that the NIA were focusing on spying political opponents.
“The unit was more focusing on spying against the
political opponents of former President Jammeh. The NIA was built with added
thieves in it. The unit (NIA) was built, and then you put some added thieves in
it that will eventually defeat the general purpose of the intelligence
services. The NIA was built badly in the first place,” he alleged.
“Well, we want to make it good so tell us why, or what
made it bad in the first place,” flipped lead Counsel Essa M. Faal.
“When the NIA came into being, along the line
sometime, somewhere the whole objective became misconstrued,” he said.
“Misconstrued or deliberately obscured,” lead Counsel
further quizzed.
Responding to the question the witness admitted by
saying: “I will take both deliberate, misconstrued, obscures, because some
officers even working in the unit you ask them honestly today aside what is the
objective of the unit, they would not be able to explain exactly what is the
objective,” he remarked.
He made these revelations at Dunes Hotel in Kololi,
while testifying before the Commission.
According to him, the whole objective was to serve the
government of the then former President Yahya Jammeh.
Hydara 54 said the NIA were operating to serve the
president and to give him fair advantage in elections.
“You know that is unlawful,” stressed lead Counsel
Faal.
“Yes! It was very unlawful counsel,” replied the witness.
“Its taxpayers’ money being used to spy against
political opponents in order to gather information, in order to advantage the
president,” added Counsel Faal.
“This was very
un-lawful Counsel, but let me start from sources. When you look at the NIA my
opinion, and I think a sound minded person like me would agree with me that the
NIA was built to be bad,” said the witness.
On ‘Green Youth’:
He said the ‘Green Youth’ were accomplished into the
NIA and would do anything to please former President Yahya Jammeh.
“The ‘green boys’ become thugs to the ruling party.
The NIA basically has several units, but let me start from the NSS. To dissect
a little during the time of the NSS the units that were in existence were the
counter espionage unit, political and dissidence group, the economic sabotage
unit, and the operational room responsible for multimedia communication
monitoring, and the religious group,” he listed.
He continues: “Apart from these units all over we have
the ‘liaison’ outside the country, and the special ups were later added.”
He said the political, and dissidence group were into
existence since the first regime.
“I will explain a little about that. This particular
unit has been existing since the first republic, and to my understanding, and
the way I am taught, the unit is to monitor the activities of the registered
political parties. The simple reason is all geared towards making sure people
don’t just jump up under the pretext of ‘I am a political party’, and we give
them a free hand to go about their normal businesses when underneath maybe
something could be cooking under,” he asserted.
He pontificated that the ‘political and dissidence’
group was the unit that many NIA officers don’t like simply, because it
involves lot of writings, and transcribing.
“Whenever there are political activities anywhere the
personals have to go there to cover that meeting to see what message they are
sending. If there is anything subversive and you come home with those tapes to
the office, and you transcribe everything, then send it to the analysis unit to
deduce whatever they deem is intelligent,” he concluded.
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