It was an international incident that was not widely reported by  major international news outlets. In July 2005, the bodies of 44 Ghanian Nationals were discovered in Tanji forest in Gambia. It was determined that the victims were lured from Senegal to Gambia with the promise of transportation to new and brighter lives in Europe. Sadly, this would not be the case.

Last August, a joint Commission of the United Nations and ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) was set up to investigate what actually occured. When word of this incident initially became known, the Ghanaian government stated that it felt that this was a "State Sponsored Killing." The internal human rights record of president yahya Jammeh makes this claim legitimate on the surface.

So far in 2009, the crackdown on independent media in Gambia continues. Six members of the United States senate recently signed a letter to President Jammeh regarding missing journalist Ebrima Manneh and press freedom in general. The death of one high profile journalist remains unsolved to this day. A violent campaign aganist "witchcraft" has seen Gambian security forces entered Senegal on more than one occasion this year.

So after several failed attempts to set up inquiries to determine what exactly happened in Tanji, the UN and ECOWAS set this investigative panel. The failure to properly determine what happened led to the souring of releations between Banjul and Accra. So when the report was handed to the Ghanaian foreign minister at a UN meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, there was some optimism that finally, there will be some answers to who perpetrated this massacre.

Although the government of Gambia was not found to be directly responsible, some members of the state security services were found to have conducted the killings for personal gains. It is difficult to believe that some members of the security services would be behind this without their superiors having any direct knowledge.

In recent years however, the NIA had taken some actions at the behest of president Jammeh particularly the operation against 'Withcraft'. The report has determined that the Gambian Government is liable for what has happened.

The following reccomendations were also made by the Commission:

The families of the deceased are to be compensated by the Gambian government. The report left the amount of compensation to be determined by the respective governments. There is reluctance by the Gambian government to pay this claim because it will indicate its 'complicity' in the killings. The incident was committed by some individuals on state payroll, and after all, there is evidence that the deceased were arrested before their deaths.

The bodies of the deceased will exhumed from their current resting place and reinterred in their homelands. This act could be the reason why there is some disagreement over the amount of compensation that will be paid to the unfortunate victims of this incident. But with these questions being answered there are other questions that remained unaswered however.

If President Jammeh did not order these people be killed, then who did? Could this be an attempt by individuals in the Jammeh regime to cash in on the human trafficking trade from West Africa to Europe? Or in a more perverse idea, is this a cruel loyalty test to the Jammeh regime? The major question of who was behind this incident has been answered to the satisfacation of the Ghanaian government. But whether there will be any follow up to this report still remains to be seen.

The author publishes Confused Eagle on the internet. It can be found at http://morganrights.tripod.com