Three victims of a fake AIDS cure created by former Gambian president Yahya Jammeh have sued for damages. It’s the first case against the former dictator to reach national courts since he fled into exile.
U.S.-based charity AIDS-Free World, which helped the three victims gather evidence, said they filed the lawsuit at the High Court in the capital Banjul on Thursday.
Ousman Sowe, Lamin Ceesay and Fatou Jatta were among the first Gambians who joined Jammeh’s HIV/AIDS treatment programme in 2007, where they were forced to give up anti-retroviral drugs and drink home-made potions that made them vomit.
Their health worsened, while others in the programme died.
“I believe it is my responsibility to hold Jammeh to account,” said Sowe, a former university lecturer in his 60s.
“I knew that one day the real story would be told.”
People were afraid to criticise the president when he was in power, the victims said, so doctors and patients publicly declared that his medicines were working.
U.N. agency UNAIDS blames Jammeh’s programme for The Gambia’s little success in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
Jammeh’s 22-year reign over the small West African nation was widely marred by accusations of human rights abuses.
He lost the country’s December 2016 election to current leader Adama Barrow.
