Chief Justice to retire in August
The chief justice of The Gambia, Hassan Jallow, will retire from office on 1st August, two weeks shy of his 75th birthday. In a missive sent to the president of the Gambia Bar Association dated 26th May, CJ Jallow wrote: “I wish to inform you and the members of the bar that with the approval […]
Black News 
The chief justice of The Gambia, Hassan Jallow, will retire from office on 1st August, two weeks shy of his 75th birthday.
In a missive sent to the president of the Gambia Bar Association dated 26th May, CJ Jallow wrote: “I wish to inform you and the members of the bar that with the approval of His Excellency, The President, I shall be retiring voluntarily from the Office of Chief Justice with effect from 1st August 2026.
“In doing so, I would like to register my great appreciation to the membership of the bar and to your good self at its helm as president as well as all your predecessors – for your immense support to the judiciary during this decade of my tenure as chief justice.
“Many of the successes of this period in the administration of justice have been made possible by the close collaboration between the bench and the bar and we remain grateful for that. The bar is a very important stakeholder – if not perhaps the most important. It must therefore remain vigilant in partnership to ensure independence, the impartiality and efficiency of the judiciary. And thus continue its valuable contribution to effective justice, to the rule of law and to peace and progress in our country.”
Hassan Jallow was sworn-in as chief justice by President Adama Barrow on 15th February 2017. In 2020, he was part of an independent probe of a report that cleared Akinwumi Adesina, the president of the African Development Bank, of corruption charges.
In 2002, he was appointed as a judge of the Appeals Chamber of the Special Court for Sierra Leone and served until 2003 when he took over as United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. In March 2012, he was appointed UN Under-Secretary-General and Prosecutor of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals.
He served as Minister of Justice and Attorney General from 1984 to 1994 in the First Republic government of President Sir Dawda Jawara. From December 1998 to July 2002, he served as a justice of the Supreme Court of The Gambia.
Hassan Jallow was born in Bansang, on 14th August 1951, the son of revered imam and scholar Abubacar Zaidi Jallow whom he succeeded as caliph of the Bansang Tijaniyya sub-sect. He attended St Augustine’s and Gambia high schools in Banjul from 1963 to 1971; University of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, in 1973 and graduated in 1976; became a barrister-at-law in Nigeria in 1977 after studying for a year at the Nigerian Law School in Lagos; and acquired a master’s degree in public international law from University College London in 1979.
Married with several children, is the author of scholarly and biographical works including Journey for Justice; Prosecuting International Crimes: Recollections and Reflections; Law, Justice And Governance: Selected Papers; The Law of Evidence; and The Law of the African (Banjul) Charter on Human and People’s Rights.
