The spokesman for the Gambia Police Force, Inspector Sarjo Keita has reliably informed the Daily Observer that four Japanese nationals were currently in police custody for allegedly kidnapping over 30 women and four boys with the intention of converting them to Christianity.
Speaking to our reporters in a telephone interview, Inspector Keita revealed that on Monday October 22 the Bakau police arrested the accused persons who allegedly rented a self-contained house at Cape Point where those converted were kept in communicado for four months with a monthly payment of an undisclosed amount.
Inspector Keita said when those people were arrested they were found without documents and according to them, they converted people by baptising them on the beach.
When these reporters visited the alleged converts at the Bakau Police Station, they revealed that they came from different parts of the country.
They said they were promised jobs by the accused persons but not to convert them to Christianity. "We have lived in the self-contained house for a period of four months under restricted conditions as they don't allow us to go about our daily lives," they disclosed.
The four boys who are residents of Bakau also revealed that they had lived with the women, some of them quite old in the self-contained house after their conversion to Christianity against their will and were paid a monthly salary of 1000 dalasis with a promise that they would be provided with jobs.
The boys further revealed that it was not until Monday October 22 when they converted two other youths along the Bakau Beach that the matter was reported to the police who dispatched a team of officers to raid the beach side where they were found converting other youths believed to be bumsters.
The accused persons were arrested and taken to the Bakau Police Station.