Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Armed coup attempt against brutally homophobic Gambian president seems to have failed

The BBC said both military and diplomatic sources say soldiers from the presidential guard attacked the presidential palace in Banjul early Tuesday, but  President Jammeh wasn't in Gambia.
     Gambian radio aired a governmental statement denying a coup attempt, but later Mr. Jammeh confirmed the attack, which he claimed came from invading forces from Senegal loyal to a "disgraced" former soldier and that four attackers were killed and four more were captured.
     Jammeh said he would be:
"returning from my state visit to France immediately," but a French foreign ministry spokesman said there was no indication Mr Jammeh had been in the country. Some reports say he is in Dubai. 
France 24 reports that Jammeh:
     ...eventually landed in the Chadian capital of N'Djamena in a plane bearing the presidential emblem, according to Reuters.
     That plane took off from N'Djamena late on Tuesday after a reported refuelling stop, during which Jammeh told officials in Chad he was returning home, a senior Chadian government source said.
     The pre-dawn assault near the presidential palace in Banjul triggered panic in the tropical city, while national radio went off air for several hours and state television was suspended.
      Opposition politician Sheikh Sidya Bayo told a private Senegalese radio station that the unrest was "the start of a mutiny that changed" into a bid to topple Jammeh.
     Three of the suspected coup plotters were killed and another captured by Jammeh's forces, but there was no confirmation of an overall death toll from the fighting. 
V[]cative reports that,
     ...Jammeh was quoted in February as saying, “We will fight these vermin called homosexuals or gays the same way we are fighting malaria-causing mosquitoes, if not more aggressively.”
     The U.S. responded last week to Jammeh’s long history of institutional homophobia by excluding Gambia from the African Growth and Opportunities Act, something activists praised as a first step toward addressing LGBT human-rights abuses in the country. Gambia was exporting around $37 million in goods to the U.S. each year duty-free before the suspension placed on its ability to receive benefits from the act.



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