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Gambia News: Gambia sentences second person to death in a week

Kanifing Court found Sulayman Bah guilty of killing his housemate Mamudou Jallow on Sept. 1 by bludgeoning him over the head following a dispute over 10,000 dalasi ($457) in their apartment.

Magistrate Moses Richards said the court had taken strong action to curtail a rising tide of violent crime by foreigners which he said was alien to Gambian culture.

Last week, the same court sentenced a Senegalese woman, Tabara Samb, to death for killing her husband by pouring boiling oil over him after she grew suspicious the Muslim man was going to take a second wife.

Death sentences in Gambia are rare and require the signature of President Yahya Jammeh, who has ruled the country of 1.5 million people since seizing power in a bloodless military coup in 1994.

Although permitted under the 1996 constitution, only one person has been executed since independence from Britain in 1965.