Vote tests Gambian leader who said only Allah can remove him
BANJUL- Gambians voted on Thursday in the first serious electoral challenge to President Yahya Jammeh, who has said only Allah can remove him from office and once claimed he would rule the tiny riverside West African nation for "a billion years".
Jammeh, who seized power in a 1994 coup, has made headlines by claiming to have a herbal cure for AIDS that only works on Thursdays, declaring Gambia an Islamic republic and threatening to slit the throats of practising homosexuals.
Rallies for the main opposition challenger businessman Adama Barrow have attracted crowds of thousands, in a rare show of defiance to a leader rights groups say frequently imprisons and tortures opposition figures.
Barrow has promised to revive Gambia's economy, one of the region's most sluggish, end wide spread human rights abuses and to step down after three years as a boost to democracy.
