News

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.

By Bampia Bundu

A journalist working for Radio Democracy 98.1 has complained to the journalists’ body, SLAJ that he was “manhandled” and later “assaulted” by police officers while covering the Ansarul violence in Freetown.

Alex Laurence Koroma claimed that the security personnel forcefully took the recorder from him when they realized he was trying to get some sound bites from the rowdy school pupils who had clashed with the police.

By Fasalie Sulaiman Kamara

Public relations officer of the National Union of Sierra Leone Students has warned that some 4,000 students, about 60% of Fourah Bay College may repeat as a result of some “new administrative policies”.

Speaking to Politico after the cancellation by students’ warden of a meeting scheduled earlier by some ‘concerned students’, Thomas Moore Conteh said they had been invited as apparent body to listen to the concerns of the students at FBC .

By Kenneth Thompson & Bampia Bundu

A pupil of the Ansarul Islamic Secondary School was alleged to have been shot dead by police following a violent clash between pupils and traders accused of occupying the premises of the school on Guard Street in Freetown.

According to some pupils who owned up to claims of obstructing a whole learning day by protesting, they were being “disturbed by the loud music coming from the traders who sell their wares very close to their classes”.

By Kenneth Thompson

Country manager of the Sierra Leone Bottling Company, Israel Okujagu, has told a Fanta Cocktail launch in Freetown that his company will soon pay Le15 billion to government in various forms of taxes.

Mr. Okujagu said the new Fanta Cocktail drink, would provide new opportunity for the industry, while at the same time contributing to providing more jobs for the youths, which would in turn improve the economy.

By Aminata Phidelia Allie

First prosecution witness yesterday testified in the separate trial of former National Revenue Authority, NRA, staff, who was standing trial for alleged conspiracy and misappropriation of public funds, contrary to the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) Act, 2008.

ACC investigator, Keni Alie Brima Walker, told a High Court in Freetown presided over by Justice M. A. Paul that the accused, Elizabeth King, denied any knowledge of a Le45m cheque, an amount she allegedly misappropriated.

By Aminata Phidelia Allie

Reliable sources in the judiciary have confirmed that the alleged rape case involving sacked deputy minister of education, Mahmoud Tarawallie, has been committed to the Freetown High Court for trial.

Magistrate Tonia Barnet on Friday committed the matter for trial in the High Court despite a no-case submission by lawyer Sulaiman Kabbah Koroma.