Inside a Plot to Overthrow the President of the Gambia

What happened when 11 audacious exiles armed themselves for a violent night in the Gambia.

- Stuart A. Reid, illustrations by Matthew Woodson

The dark hours of the morning on December 30, 2014, eight men gathered in a graveyard a mile down the road from the official residence of Yahya Jammeh, the president of the Gambia. The State House overlooks the Atlantic Ocean from the capital city of Banjul, on an island at the mouth of the Gambia River. It was built in the 1820s and served as the governor’s mansion through the end of British colonialism, in 1965. Trees and high walls separate the house from the road, obscuring any light inside.

The men were dressed in boots and dark pants, and as two of them stood guard, the rest donned Kevlar helmets and leather gloves, strapped on body armor and CamelBaks, and loaded their guns. Their plan was to storm the presidential compound, win over the military, and install their own civilian leader. They hoped to gain control of the country by New Year’s Day.

The head of the group was Lamin Sanneh, a bulky 35-year-old who had commanded an elite military unit charged with protecting the president, until he had fallen out with Jammeh the year before and taken refuge in the suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland. To the men in the graveyard, Sanneh seemed perfectly suited to the mission. He had been trained at the best foreign military academies and was familiar with the inner workings of Jammeh’s security apparatus, from the armaments in the State House’s guard towers to the routes taken by the presidential motorcade.

“Gentlemen,” Sanneh called out, in the manner of a general briefing his troops before battle. They would split into two teams, he reminded them: Bravo would wait for Alpha’s first gunshot before mounting its attack. To the men’s frustration, they had misplaced one of their two pairs of night-vision goggles. But there was no time to waste. They prayed, then formed a huddle. Together, they whispered: “Let’s go take back our country.”