U.S. authorities have charged a former military service member and a Texas developer with conspiring to help overthrow the government of the African nation of Gambia in a Dec. 30 coup attempt.
Papa Faal and Cherno Njie, both Gambian Americans, are accused in a criminal complaint filed Saturday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis of violating the Neutrality Act, a 1794 law that makes it a crime for Americans to make war on a country with which the United States is at peace. The two men also were charged with conspiring to possess a firearm in furtherance of a violent crime.
The State Department condemned the coup at the time and later rejected Gambian President Yahya Jammeh’s claim that “powers that I would not name” were behind the failed attempt to unseat him by dissidents from Britain and the United States.
After the failed coup, Faal, 46, sought refuge at the U.S. embassy in Dakar, Senegal, and told FBI investigators that Njie was one of the leaders and main financiers of the attempt, according to the complaint. The complaint notes that Faal served seven years in the U.S. Air Force and three years in the Army, having been discharged in 2012.
Njie, 57, is CEO of a development company in Austin, Texas, and worked for the state as manager of the Texas Housing Tax Credit Program from 1995 to 2001.
