A truth commission in the tiny West African state of The Gambia began hearing witness testimony on Monday as it set about investigating rights violations committed by the regime of Yahya Jammeh.

Modelled on South Africa's investigation into its apartheid era, the commission will hold hearings into Jammeh's 22-year era of oppression which ended in 2016 after he was forced from power.

President Adama Barrow has hailed the commission as a step towards national healing and a way to prosecute those responsible and offer some closure to victims and families.

Rights defenders accused the regime of systematic torture against opponents and journalists, extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detentions and disappearances in the English-speaking country.

The first witness on Monday, Ebrima Chongan, a police deputy inspector general before the 1994 coup which brought Jammeh to power, testified that he was tortured in a rat-infested prison outside the capital Banjul after the putsch.