The Gambia is suspending state employees accused of rights violations during ex-dictator Yahya Jammeh's regime, including senior members of the country's security forces, a justice ministry spokesperson said Tuesday.
The move marks a significant step forward in the country's transitional justice process.
The ministry has written to the employers of those concerned to notify them of their suspension, spokesman Kimbeng Tah told AFP Tuesday.
It expects confirmation of the suspensions "in the coming days," he said.
The commander of the police force's Anti-Crime Unit, Gorgui Mboob, and the Drug Law Enforcement Agency's director of operations, Ebrima Jim Drammeh, are among those named.
A truth commission that investigated alleged crimes committed by the state under the now-exiled leader's 22-year rule accused dozens of current and former state personnel of a litany of abuses.
Members of the police, the army, the intelligence services and the prison services were among those accused of offences including torture, sexual violence and extrajudicial killings.
The move is one of the first concrete actions taken to implement the truth commission's recommendations.
- Victims groups want Jammeh -
Reed Brody, a lawyer with the International Commission of Jurists who works with Jammeh's victims, welcomed the news.
"It's a tangible, concrete step by the government," he said.
On May 25, the government accepted all but two of the 265 recommendations made in the commission's final report, tabled late last year.
Those included recommendations to prosecute Jammeh himself for a swathe of crimes, from raping a beauty queen to using death squads.
He is also accused of ordering the murder of the AFP journalist Deyda Hydara and administering bogus HIV "treatment" programmes.
Jammeh is living in exile in Equatorial Guinea, which has no extradition treaty with The Gambia.
Victims' groups have urged authorities to do more to extradite the ex-president for prosecution.
Government spokesman Ebrima Sankareh last week told AFP that authorities had hired foreign and Gambian lawyers to outline next steps for a trial, which could begin by the end of the year.
The government has already said it will prosecute all 70 alleged perpetrators named in the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission's twice-delayed report.
That includes former vice president Isatou Njie-Saidy and members of the so-called "Junglers" hit squad.
The authorities have also begun working on a reparations bill.
Jammeh was forced into exile in early 2017 after his shock electoral defeat to current President Adama Barrow and a six-week crisis that led to military intervention by other West African states.