DENVER — Opening statements are expected Tuesday in the trial of a man accused of torturing political opponents of Gambia’s former military dictator Yahya Jammeh nearly 20 years ago, the latest international trial tied to his regime.
Federal prosecutors invoked a rarely used law that allows people to be tried in the U.S. judicial system for torture allegedly committed abroad.
Michael Sang Correa, a citizen of Gambia, was indicted in 2020 while living in the United States. He is charged with being part of a conspiracy to mentally and physically torture people suspected of involvement in a failed 2006 coup in Gambia.
Prosecutors say Correa was part of a military unit known as the “Junglers” that reported directly to Jammeh. They say he and his alleged co-conspirators allegedly kicked and beat detainees using pipes and wires, sometimes covering the victims’ heads with plastic bags, and also administering electric shocks to their bodies, including their genitals.
His attorneys plan to argue that Correa was coerced to participate and acted under duress, according to court filings. Prosecutors and the defense have agreed that there is information indicating that members of the Junglers who did not carry out Jammeh’s orders without question would be killed.
Jammeh was a 22-year dictator of Gambia, a country surrounded by Senegal except for a small Atlantic coastline, and was accused of ordering opponents tortured, jailed and killed. He lost a presidential election and went into exile in Equatorial Guinea in 2017 after initially refusing to step down.
Correa came to the U.S. to serve as a bodyguard for Jammeh in December 2016, but he remained and overstayed his visa after Jammeh was ousted, according to prosecutors. Since sometime after 2016, Correa had been living in Denver and working as a day laborer, they said.
According to Human Rights Watch, Correa is the third person to be tried under a U.S. law that allows people to be charged with committing torture abroad. The two others who have been previously tried were both U.S. citizens and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences.
Charles “Chuckie” Taylor, Jr., the son of former Liberian president Charles Taylor, was convicted in 2008 in connection with torture committed in Liberia from 1997 to 2003.
In 2023, Ross Roggio of Pennsylvania was convicted of torturing an employee in Iraq while accused of operating an illegal manufacturing plant in Kurdistan.
Other countries have also prosecuted those tied to Jammeh’s regime.
Last year, Jammeh’s former interior minister was sentenced to 20 years behind bars by a Swiss court for crimes against humanity. In 2023, a German court convicted a Gambian man who was also a member of the Junglers of murder and crimes against humanity for involvement in the killing of government critics in Gambia.