Fatou Camara Charged to Court

The embattled former press and public relations director at State House has been finally charged to court by Gambian state authorities.

Ms. Fatou Carama fell out with President Yahya Jammeh in August this year and has since been under siege.  Her prolonged detention runs counter to the Gambian constitution, which allows detention period of 72 hours.

But the Gambia government has ignored previous calls by rights groups and kept the former popular state TV broadcaster at the closely-guarded, highly inaccessible spy agency, National Intelligence Agnecy,  for 23 days.

Despite her prolonged detention, during which she was denied access to family and lawyer and even colleagues, Ms Fatou Camara was visibly, in good physical and mental shape when she appeared before the magistrates’ court in Banjul yesterday.

State prosecutors accused her of giving false information against her former boss, President Jammeh, to a U.S based Gambian online newspaper, Freedom, during her engagement at the State House.  The newspaper, run by an exile Gambia journalist, is critical of President Jammeh’s government.

Ms Camara however, denied any wrongdoing.

The anchor of Gambia’s most popular TV show, FatuShow, Ms Camara was first appointed by President Jammeh in 2011 and dismissed the same year. But her was short-lived tenure can be credited for the re-opening of a government proscribed newspaper, The Standard, and convening, for the first time since the current regime came to power in 1994, a dialogue between President Jammeh and private media.

She however, bounced back in May this year and fired again only two months later – in August and has since been under siege.  

But, even after Fatou’s lawyer, a former vice chair of the then-military junta (now civilian government), Edward Signghateh, has succeeded in convincing the court to grant bail to her, her days behind bars might not be over yet.

At the going of going to press, she was struggling to fulfill her bail condition of five million dalasi or more than 142, 000 US dollars.