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Gambia News: Gambia frees opposition figure Ousman Jatta alias 'Rambo' in Amnesty probe

"I'm happy to be getting back to my family ... Thank God that I am released," Ousman Jatta told Reuters after he was freed from police custody at Sare Ngai in the far east of the tiny former British colony, which pokes like a crooked finger into French-speaking Senegal from the Atlantic coast.

Jatta, a member of the opposition United Democratic Party (UDP), was arrested last year following elections which returned President Yahya Jammeh to office with a landslide win.

Another detained UDP supporter, a school headmaster, was also freed on Sunday, party officials said.

Jatta was held on unspecified national security charges after protesting that non-Gambians had been unlawfully registered on the electoral roll for the vote.

Two workers from Amnesty International, one with dual U.S./British citizenship and the other a Nigerian, tried to visit Jatta last week and were detained on suspicion of spying. They were released on Friday without charge along with a Gambian journalist who was accompanying them.

U.K.-based Amnesty criticised the detentions of its workers as an attempt to obstruct investigation of human rights abuses.

Human rights groups accuse Jammeh, who seized power in a bloodless military coup in 1994, of jailing his opponents, political repression, and rigging polls. He denies the charges.

His administration has detained a number of journalists over the years and media freedom watchdogs accuse it of failing to fully investigate the 2004 death of a leading independent newspaper editor shot dead in his car on the way home from work.