Sillah Ousman

Sillah Ousman, born in Bakau, Gambia, on the 1st of January 1995, also known as Sillah Ansu, born in Bakau, Gambia, on the 1st of February 1984. He was arrested for participating in the international terrorist organization called “Islamic State”. He underwent a process of radicalization and adherence to the principles of Jihad, agreeing along with Touray Alagie to attend an IS training camp in Libya. They participated in the training camp called “mo’askar” in the Libyan desert. In the end, he pronounced the oath to the Islamic State, formally assuming the role of a soldier.
The police became aware of him thanks to Touray’s interrogation, during which his name was mentioned. According to Touray, Sillah was a man with a somewhat “rebellious” attitude, but this did not prevent him from completing the training. Sillah followed the same path as Touray; they left Gambia and passed through Mali and then Niger, reaching Libya in May 2016. It was Touray himself who convinced Sillah to follow him, even though the latter had already been indoctrinated by a fundamentalist Imam in Gambia.
Sillah arrived in Palermo on December 1st, 2016 and provided different personal information, stating he was born in 1995 when he was born in 1984, as discovered in a conversation on June 1st, 2018. He managed to receive a residence permit for humanitarian reasons and was admitted to participate in the “system of protection for asylum seekers and refugees” project in Lecce.
According to his first version, he left Senegal, crossing Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, reaching Libya in 2016, where he spent a lot of time without working, before landing in Italy. He said he was arrested in Libya by the “Asma Boys” for two months.
In the facilities where Sillah was hosted, he was antisocial, sometimes experiencing states of euphoria, partly due to the use of drugs, and often had visions of fighting and using weapons. The presence of these psychotic states led to a specialized medical examination, which diagnosed him with a form of “religious delirium” accompanied by the use of alcohol and psychoactive substances.
These psychotic behaviours were based on a religious faith characterized by evident profiles of delusional alteration, with references to the mystical plan, spirits, external voices, etc. Surveillance footage showed him simulating the use of an assault rifle; on another occasion, he said he wanted to “take the gun to shoot and kill…”. In a phone call intercepted by the police, he declared himself a “soldier of God“.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office of Naples issued an arrest for Ousman Sillah, who was interrogated on the 20th of June 2018. During this interrogation, he confirmed having been in the training camp in Libya. Sillah said he had undergone training and learned to use weapons. He declared that he had not sworn an individual oath but later took a group oath. He stated that he had been at the camp for four months and was then expelled due to his behaviour.
On the 22nd of June 2024, it was decided that Sillah should be kept in pre-trial detention in Bellizzi Irpino-Avellino prison due to a concrete and present danger of criminal behaviour because of the dangerousness of the training and the oath, which commits the soldier to commit acts of violence against an indiscriminate multitude of people and to accept martyrdom. On the 18th of October 2023, he was deported from Italy back to Gambia.