More to an Imam than Leading Prayer Congregations

Imam Baba Leigh

When Imam Baba Leigh was declared winner of the first-ever pan-African human rights defenders award, broad smiles and loud cries of joy simultaneously filled Kairaba hotel’s giant Jaama Hall peopled by hundreds of human rights defenders from across Africa and beyond.

The atmosphere was emotionally charged, especially for rights activist Dr Isatou Touray who, like Baba Leigh, has had her share of the repression in Gambia, a country once known to be a model of democracy in Africa.

The Cleric Was Neither on a Vigil, After All

Imam Leigh freed at last

The ‘disappeared’ Gambian Islamic scholar, who had been wildly speculated dead, has finally appeared, alive and ticking. But, after all, the astute cleric had neither been on a vigil. In fact, the past five months that he’d been away, whether he was regularly saying his prayers, is a question that awaits his confirmation.

Imam Baba Leigh was kept against his will, arbitrarily, in a secretly-shrouded place where not even his wife could access to him. The Gambian state authorities, who had all along been telling the public, unfaithfully, that the imam was not in their custody, are the culprit here.