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(LEFT) Sunkary Yarboe photographed at her home in Sukuta. Sunkary was the first wife of Gambian army Lt Basiru Barrow, who was executed by supporters of former Gambian president, Yahya Jammeh on November 11th 1994, for an alleged coup attempt. For twenty-four years Sunkary did not know what had happened to her husband. In April 2019, at the Gambia’s Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC), witness statements led forensic experts to search Yundum army barracks. Basiru’s remains were exhumed, from a mass unmarked grave.
Sunkary said “I still do not have his body from the exhumation. I will feel very bad about that, forever. The pain is always there without a body, to bury. We are crying, there is no justice, the men who killed Basiru are still on the streets.”
(RIGHT) Yundum army barracks where a mass grave was found containing a number of executed soldiers, including the remains of Lt Basiru Barrow