By Aminata Phidelia Allie
This is the first Court Martial that I am witnessing but I am positive that Court Martials in other countries are very serious businesses and they do not last long.
Mostly two days and the accused are either convicted or acquitted. In Sierra Leone, however, the military tribunal in Freetown has proven to be just like any other matter that drags on for monthsand months, sometimes for no convincingly clear reason.
The court,presently trying 14 soldiers for alleged mutiny, seems to have lost momentum after its thirty-sixth sitting.The 60-trial-day period it sets itself is slowly elapsing. After the government was forced into setting up a tribunal to try the men who had been arrested on allegations of them plotting to overthrow the Ernest Bai Koroma-led All Peoples Congress regime, the whole country was anxious to know what crime they had really committed in the cold of that rainy August in 2013.
When the trial finally started eight months later, the media, family members, well-wishers, enemies, the military force and the international community went agog, some with a bated breath.The trial started on 2 April 2014 with a huge crowd, forcing people sometimes to stay outside the perimeter of the courtroom and on the corridors waiting to hear what went on in the inside.
Lately, however, all that eagerness died away.Today there are hardly any audience in the court except for the accused persons, the Judge Advocate and his panel, a few lawyers from the prosecution and defense, one or two pressmen and the court attendants. Even the cameraman, who was apparently charged with the responsibility of filming the proceedings, got tired. Anyone who went there for the first time wouldn’t believe that they were really inside a courtroom and one that was looking into a matter as serious as mutiny.
Many adjourned dates have come and gone and nothing serious seemed to have happened. Earlier there were delays caused by the defense team’s objection, first to the eligibility of the Judge Advocate who presided over the matter. Also was the issue of competence of an earlier president of the Court Martial panel whom they said “lacked the competency to sit on the matter because he had been expelled from a military college in Nigeria”. Added to that was the fact that he and the fourteenth accused (the only Captain amongst the lot) had had some misunderstanding. Then it was the payment issue. Now, sessions don’t hole because it’s either a witness is absent or the defense lawyers are absent. Most of the defense lawyers’ absence was due to non-payment of their legal fees.
Many people would wonder why the prosecution team had never been absent. Were they sufficiently being paid to prosecute the alleged mutineers, whiles the defense team was not being paid well and on time to defend them? The Judge Advocate, who, often than not, appeared happy at the absence of any stakeholder and at the thought of aday’s session being cut short, could be seen and heard telling one laughable joke after the other. He cracked jokes to the lawyers, while the visibly confused and unhappy accused frowned at them. The prosecution, led by state prosecutor Gerald Joseph Soyei, has taken in seven witnesses.None of them gave convincing evidence. What they called factual witnesses were the first and second prosecution witnesses who told the court that the accused persons said this, that and this to me. He plans to call more, but from information I gathered, they are all police witnesses who would tell the court how and when they obtained statements from the accused persons.
It is not yet clear whether the timeline set for the trial would be met or it would be shifted forward, especially when there had been one unnecessary stop-start after the other. It is almost a year now.The men are still in prison but their trial is not being treated seriously. A defense lawyer once asked: “Are they being punished before they are tried?” I really wondered why they couldn’t be released on bail and have their movements restricted. Better still, they could be kept under a house arrest. As stated in an article by one of Sierra Leone’s finest journalists, Umaru Fofana, “mutiny or coup is bad. But making unsubstantiated allegations of mutiny or coup is nothing insignificant either”.
The 14 men before the court have suffered. They had denied all eight counts of conspiracy, mutiny, failure to suppress mutiny and incitement to mutiny yet they had been incarcerated at the country’s maximum prison on Pademba Road. If there is evidence to lead to their convictions, let it be heard. People, including reporters who devote time and resources to the coverage of the Court Martial, are getting tired of waiting. We are tired of paying our transports to rush to the court martial where nothing newsworthy happens. We are tired. I am tired!
(C) Politico 05/08/14
