Ex-member of former Gambia dictator's military unit is on trial in the US for torture

DENVER — A man accused of torturing people suspected in a planned coup against Gambia's longtime leader was a low-ranking private in the West African country's military who risked torture and death himself if he disobeyed superiors, a lawyer for the defendant told jurors Tuesday in opening statements at his trial.

After moving to Denver, Michael Sang Correa was indicted in 2020 under a rarely used law that allows people to be tried in the U.S. judicial system for torture allegedly committed abroad. He is charged with both torturing five people suspected of involvement in the failed 2006 coup against Yahya Jammeh as well as being part of a conspiracy to torture alleged coup plotters while serving in a military unit known as the ''Junglers,'' which reported directly to Jammeh.

Correa's lawyer, Jared Westbroek, told jurors that the persistent threat hanging over him shows he did not have a choice about whether to participate, let alone a decision to make about whether to join a conspiracy.

''Following an order is not the same as making an agreement,'' said Westbroek, who noted that it is hard for Americans who live in a ''very blessed country'' with freedom to understand Correa's situation.

But while federal prosecutors agreed there's evidence the Junglers lived in ''constant fear," a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice's human rights unit told jurors that some Junglers refused to participate.

''The defendant is on trial today because of the choices he made,'' Justice Department attorney Marie Zisa told jurors, urging them to find Correa, who was sitting with his lawyers, guilty of all six charges.

One of the alleged victims, a soldier, was stuffed into a bag, suspended high in the air and then dropped to the ground, Zisa said. Some people were tortured before they were questioned by a panel investigating the coup, while others were later subjected to torture, including beatings that could last hours, she said.

Zisa and the prosecution's first witness, Maggie Dwyer, a senior lecturer in African Studies and International Development at the University of Edinburgh, focused more on Gambia's history since it became independent from Britain in 1965 and Jammeh — rather than on the alleged actions of Correa himself.

Jammeh, a member of the military, seized power in a coup from the country's first president in 1994, and survived three significant coup attempts, making him suspicious of the very military he depended on to keep him in power, Dwyer testified.

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.

Correa is the third person to be tried under a U.S. law that allows people to be charged with committing torture abroad, according to the group Human Rights Watch. The two others were U.S. citizens given lengthy prison sentences.

In 2023 , Ross Roggio of Pennsylvania was convicted of torturing an employee in Iraq while operating an allegedly illegal manufacturing plant in Kurdistan.

Other countries have also prosecuted those tied to Jammeh's regime.