By Saio Marrah
Justice Ansumana Ivan Sesay has sentenced 20-year-old Idrissa Tholly to four years imprisonment after admitting guilty of committing wounding his friend, Nabieu Sorie Kamara, for which a medical report indicated 17 stitches.
Narrating the circumstance of the incident, the convict told the court on Tuesday 16th May 2023 that the incident occurred after the birthday of the victim who invited him but did not serve him food.
He said upon their return, the birthday celebrant, persistently provoked him to the extent of arousing his anger which he said led to a fight between them.
During the course of the fight, he said the victim stifled his neck almost to the point of death and that the victim is older and physically stronger than him.
He said that prompted him (the convict) to throw stones at the victim in his defence, which injured the head and back of the victim’s shoulder.
Before passing his sentence, the presiding judge told the convict that the maximum punishment for the offence is life imprisonment.
After a plea of mercy by a legal aid defence lawyer for the convict that he had not wasted the time of the court, and that he is a first-time offender and a young man of 20 years of age, the defence pleaded for one-year imprisonment for his client.
He said that is because the three months he had already spent on remand would serve him a lesson.
However, the state prosecutor from the law officers department, Tommy Bangahun Zizer, pleaded for the imprisonment of five years and below.
More so, a female member of the jurors, who said she has one child pleaded for seven years imprisonment for the convict before Justice Sesay pronounced the four years jail term.
In a separate matter, the presiding judge also sentenced Mohamed Komba Alpha to seven months imprisonment, which he had already spent on remand after pleading guilty to committing fraudulent conversion of one Mercedes Benz truck 1314 with registration number AMF-335.
The convict also admitted guilty to obtaining an amount of 27,000 United States Dollars all entrusted to him by Isatu Kamboh Bangura for for safe custody.
According to the convict, the truck was given to him to change the gearbox, but he had been calling the complainant for seven years when she (complainant) was in the USA to send money and do the repairing work, but she was not picking up the calls.
He said he did not fraudulently convert the vehicle, but that it is still in his garage. The convict also told the court that the gearbox, which he is supposed to repair, is in the same garage but that he (the convict) had dismantled it.
Justice Sesay, before sentencing the convict to the time he had already spent on remand, with a condition that he repair the gearbox in four months, pointed out that most of the officers filing those cases do not understand what a fraudulent conversion is.
He said that most of the cases brought before him including this case do not indicate any evidence to ascertain fraudulent conversion.
Copyright © 2023 Politico (17/05/23)
