A group of senior military officials accused of planning to overthrow the Gambian government appeared on state television on Monday (March 27) confessing to a plot to take over the tiny West African country.
The Gambian authorities have arrested 28 men, including 15 army officers, since announcing last Wednesday they had uncovered a coup plot in its advanced stages led by Colonel Ndure Cham, the country's former Chief of Defence Staff.
Six of the detainees, who have been stripped of their jobs, appeared on television for close to two hours explaining their roles in the plot and apologising to President Yahya Jammeh.
One of the men, the army's former public relations spokesman Captain Bunja Darboe, read out what he said was a statement he had been due to broadcast after the coup had been carried out.
"Fellow Gambians, the Gambian Armed forces have taken over the country from the regime of President Yahya Jammeh," the statement said.
"The Gambia under Yahya Jammeh has witnessed economic and social degradation. The cost of living of an average Gambian has reached an alarming proportion. The Gambian Armed forces have felt that under the present political dispensation there cannot be any other alternative to salvage The Gambia," it said.
The statement also said that the army had planned to hand over power to an interim government within 10 days.
The six men, some of them wearing military uniform, were seated throughout the broadcast and appeared to be in good health. They said they had not been mistreated.
One of them, Captain Yaya Darboe, said his role on the day of the coup attempt had been to "take care of the airport" and that he had been ordered to shoot down any plane trying to land at around 2200 GMT on March 21.
President Jammeh cut short a trip to Mauritania late that day because of the suspected conspiracy and returned home.
Another of the men, former Accountant General Alieu Jobe, said that Cham had been convinced that he had wide backing within the Gambian army and said that a senior security official in Senegal had offered funding to the coup plotters.
The Gambian authorities have said they believe that Cham may have fled to Senegal and have asked the former French colony to apprehend and repatriate him. Senegal has declined to comment.
The Gambian government has named new intelligence and defence chiefs in an apparent purge since the plot of the top security posts in the former British colony, which depends on peanut farming, fishing and tourism for its livelihood.
The tiny state is a narrow sliver extending along the Gambia river, sandwiched between north and south halves of Senegal.
Jammeh, who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1994, is expected to seek a third elected term in elections due in October 2006.
Opponents accuse him of a range of human rights abuses as well as rigging previous elections. He opened his campaign for the 2001 presidential vote by saying he had already won and threatening to shoot anyone who disrupted polling.
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