Gambia, 2014 — military coup attempt

Event Summary

On 30 December 2014 a group of exiledi dissidents, most of them dual United States and Gambian nationals, mounted a coup attempt against President Yahya Jammeh, attacking the State House in the capital Banjul while the dictator was out of the country. Jammeh, who had himself seized power in a 1994 coup and ruled the Gambia with brutal repression for two decades, had survived several prior plots. The 2014 attempt was organized and financed largely from abroad by members of the Gambian diaspora appalled by his human rights abuses; the small assault team, led by Lieutenant Colonel Lamin Sanneh, a former commander of Jammeh's presidential guard who had fled to the United States, and including the American army veteran Njaga Jagne, entered the country from Senegal and stormed the presidential palace in a pre dawn gun battle.

But the plotters had badly overestimated the support they would receive; the presidential guard resisted fiercely, and the attack collapsed. Sanneh, Jagne, and others were killed, while surviving conspirators fled, some later prosecuted in the United States under the Neutrality Act. Jammeh returned and launched a wave of reprisals, though his rule finally ended two years later when he lost the 2016 election.