By Septimus Senessie in Kono
About eight officers of the Operations Support Division of the Sierra Leone Police, attached to the Tankoro Police Division in Kono, are alleged to have beaten up a man to coma.
The forty-year old man, Tamba Lebbie, was said to have passed out after the group of police personnel allegedly assaulted him at the Gulf International Secondary School in Koidu.
A medical report from Dr. Mohamed Sheku, at the government hospital in Koidu, stated that the victim “lost conscientiousness when brought in, but is now responding to treatment although he has been passing blood in the urine and complaining of chest pains and dizziness. I will referhim for an x-ray of the chest, skull and pelvic bone.”
Recounting his ordeal to Politico from his hospital bed Lebbie said on the day he was assaulted, he had taken his two children to school after they were earlier sent home by the disciplinary committee of the Gulf International Secondary School for failing to put on their Friday school T-shirts.
He said upon arrival at the main gate of the school, a security guard in plain clothes, whom he later identified as an OSD personnel, was standing there, adding that the guard told him not to enter the gate with his children because they were late for school.
Lebbie said he tried to explain to the security guard that his children were not late but had been sent home because they didn't put on the school T-shirt. He said when he insisted on entering the school gate, the guard dragged his two children from him and pushed them out of the gate. He pointed out that his decision to rescue his children from the hands of the guard led to a physical assault on his person in front of his children and the school administrator.
Lebbie claimed that the brawl lasted for some two munities before the school administrator intervened to separate them. He added that the principal invited them to his office to settle the matter but he was talking to them, seven well-armed OSD officers, believed to have come from the Tankoro Police Division, suddenly appeared in the school compound and were asking for him.
He couldn’t go out, he said, for fear of being manhandled by the police officers and therefore asked that the school authorities plead with the officers and be allowed report at the police station. He claimed that the OSD officersforcefully removed him out of the principal’s office, threw him to the floor and kicked him around right in front of the children and the school authorities until he passed out.
The district medical doctor, Dr. Sheku told Politico that “there were some evidence of blood on the victim’s pant but it is yet unclear at this moment to tell where the blood was coming from, except after the medical test at the Holy Trinity Hospital in Makeni where we have referred the victim for a comprehensive medical test. That will give us a clear picture of the state of the victim's health and cause of his injuries."
The wife of the victim, Seibatu Lebbie said they have been at the hospital for over two weeks without proper medical treatment because of the absence of a police medical report.
She said that after the incident, she went to the Tankoro Police Division to secure a police medical form so that the doctor could treat her husband but they refused to issue her with one and instead threatened that her husband had a case to answer at the police for fighting with their colleague.
She explained that “it took the intervention of human rights officers and other community-based-organisations, who put pressure on the police before they could issue my husband with a police report.”
Meanwhile, chairman of the Human Rights Commission in Kono District, Rev. Sahr Christian Fayah had condemned the act and described it as “police brutality against the civilian populace in the district.”
The Local Unit Commander of the Tankoro Police Division, Superintendent Momoh Ngevao, told Politico that the matter was being investigated.
He pointed out that Lebbie had a fight not with a security guard but with a uniformed police officer. He said he had opened two files to investigate both the alleged physical assault on his police officer by Tamba Lebbie and another alleged beating of Tamba Lebbie by his police officers.
He said he had provided transportation for Lebbie to go for medical treatment to Makeni but he had so far refused.
LUC Ngevao would not comment on what disciplinary action would be taken against the OSD officers if found wanting for beating Lebbie but promised that the matter would not be swept under the carpet.
© Politico 14/11/13
