‘Buried Alive’ Inside Mile 2: Acquitted Ousainou Bojang Breaks Silence on Three Months ‘Under Seal’

Written by: Dawda Baldeh

For nearly three months, Ousainou Bojang claimed he was a man erased. Acquitted just months ago by the High Court of the horrific shooting of two police officers at the Sukuta-Jabang traffic lights on 12 September 2023, Bojang has finally broken his silence.

In a gripping and emotional interview with Kerr Fatou on Thursday, alongside his sister, Amie Bojang, he pulled back the curtain on the psychological torment he says he endured deep inside the notorious Mile 2 Central Prison, revealing how he was locked away in total isolation under an ominous directive to keep him “under seal.”

The nightmare, he said, began the moment the heavy iron gates of Mile 2 slammed shut behind him.

Terrified and bewildered, Bojang said he was taken to the Riot Squad office alongside his sister, Amie.

In what he described as a cruel twist, the siblings were violently separated, leaving Ousainou to face his interrogators entirely alone.

It was during this harrowing intake process that Bojang claims the psychological and physical intimidation began.

He alleges that a commanding officer known only as “Jimbo” pinned him down.

“He grabbed and pressed my jaw,” Bojang recalled, the trauma of the moment still palpable.

But the physical assault, he says, was only a prelude to a much darker fate.

As Bojang was being processed, he claims he overheard Jimbo issue a chilling command to prison guards, bypassing the general prison population entirely: “Don’t worry, I will take him somewhere and seal him.”

Stripped of his money and with his identity reduced to a fresh thumbprint on a ledger, Bojang said he was marched down the Echo Wing into the belly of the prison’s solitary confinement unit.

Bojang revealed that he was thrown into Cell No. 7 — a suffocating, windowless concrete box.

In an eerie reminder of the prison’s dark history, the name “S.B. Sabally” was crudely scrawled beneath the door, marking it as the former cell of the infamous 1994 coup figure.

Inside what he described as a pitch-black tomb, Bojang said his only company was the ghosts of The Gambia’s turbulent past and the distant, muted presence of former National Intelligence Agency (NIA) Director Yankuba Badjie and former minister and member of the 1994 military junta, Yankuba Touray, who languished in neighbouring cells.

For nearly 90 days, Bojang said he lost all track of time.

He claimed the key to his cell never belonged to the regular prison guards but was kept under the control of the Riot Squad.

Day after day, Bojang claimed he was denied human contact, allowed out only briefly to wash before being returned to the darkness.

“They said they should not open the door for me because I was under seal,” Bojang said, his voice echoing the despair of those ninety days.

“The officer said he had my seal and that he was the one who was going to remove it. So I was in that condition for nearly three months, three months under seal.”

Before a lawyer was ever allowed to see him, Bojang claims he was repeatedly taken back into the shadows of Jimbo’s office under the watchful eye of Deputy Director Keita Saidy, completely cut off from the outside world that had already branded him a killer.

Now a free man, Bojang’s harrowing account pulls back the veil on the enduring horrors of Mile 2, leaving the state to answer damning questions.