Email Gambia News to a friend
Print version
Comment on This Gambia News

Gambia News : Accused engineer smuggled out of Gambia

A WESTCOUNTRY engineer facing charges of illegal mining in Gambia is safely back in Britain after being smuggled out of the country.

Charlie Northfield, 48, was detained in the West African country in February and held in the notorious Mile 2 jail before being released under house arrest.

He had been due to stand trial, with his employers Carnegie Minerals, accused of "economic crimes". The charity Fair Trials International said the charges had been "trumped up".

Last night, Mr Northfield, a father-of-three, was back in the UK after being spirited out of Gambia into neighbouring Senegal. The operation was planned and executed by his friend, Devon-based security company owner Martin MacGowan-Scanlon.

Mr MacGowan-Scanlon, who first met Mr Northfield in 1985, said he was incensed at his treatment by the Gambian government.

"The regime in Gambia has used Charlie as a pawn in its disagreement with his former employers and after holding him for a spell in the notorious Mile 2 prison, kept him away from his family by retaining his passport and placing him under effective house arrest," he said.

"Charlie has not seen his children for all of that time and, although his wife was able to be with him in Gambia for a short time, she left a month ago in order not to hinder any potential departure.

"After working in Gambia and having extensive experience in West Africa, I have been able to draw on my contacts to ensure that Charlie's extraction from Gambia was as risk-free as possible."

Exact details of Mr Northfield's route are being kept secret to protect those that aided his escape.

However, Mr MacGowan-Scanlon, managing director of Profile Security Services, confirmed that he had flown from the Senegalese capital Dakar to Casablanca in Morocco before returning to the UK.

"He is a very relieved man," Mr MacGowan-Scanlon said shortly after Mr Northfield arrived. "It has been a long journey. There was a blow-out on one of the cars he was travelling in and a river that should have been fairly easy to cross, he had to swim across."

Mr Northfield, a former student at the Camborne School of Mines, lives in Thailand with his wife Neung and three children.

He is a regular visitor to Plymouth, where his mother Pam, older brother Phil and sisters Anne, Debbie and Nancy all still live.

No-one from the family was available for comment last night.

Mr Northfield had travelled to Gambia in October to manage Carnegie Mineral's operations in the country.

On February 15, Gambian authorities charged him and Carnegie Minerals with economic crimes relating to alleged understatement of the value and content of mineral exports between 2006 and December 2007.

They were accused of commercially mining titanium, iron ore and uranium and the company's mining licence was cancelled by the Gambian government.

Carnegie Minerals strongly refuted the charges and stressed that titanium and iron oxide were components of mineral sands, while uranium was only found in trace elements and could not be economically extracted.

Mr Northfield was first held at the police headquarters in the Gambian capital of Banjul for three days before being charged with three counts of economic charges and one count of theft.

He then spent 10 days in Mile 2 prison – where he was not even allowed to speak to his wife – before being released on bail of $450,000. His passport was also confiscated.

In March, Mr Northfield feared he had "little chance of a fair trial".

"I have no idea how long the court case will take," he said at the time. "The prosecution lawyers have yet to produce any witness statements or evidence to support the ludicrous charges against me.

"The police had no evidence, but I was still charged on four counts of economic crimes."

Carnegie Minerals declined to comment.