Court orders witnesses testifying in Boko Haram trial to be shielded

The Federal High Court in Abuja on Tuesday granted the request of the federal government to shield prosecution witnesses that will testify in the trial of seven suspected Boko Haram members facing 11 count terrorism charge.

The defendants: Mohammed Usman, Mohammed Saleh, Umar Bello, Mohammed Salish , Yakubu Nuhu, Usman Abubakar, and Halima Aliyu have pleaded not guilty to the charges and were remanded in the custody of the Department of state security services (DSS) awaiting the prosecution to open its case before the ruling yesterday.

Delivering the ruling, Justice John Tsoho said the objection of the defendants’ counsel did not affect the substance of prosecution’s application.

However, he struck out paragraph 4A of the prosecution affidavit which the judge said contained inferences and conclusion the prosecution was not supposed to make.

Prosecution witnesses testifying in the trial will be shielded from public view including their identity.

The judge also granted prosecution counsel Shaibu Labaran prayer that witnesses be addressed with pseudo names.

Justice Tsoho overruled the submissions of the third and sixth defendants counsel that the entire prosecution’s application were offensive to the provision of Evidence Act.

Earlier, in their arguments counsel to the 3rd defendant, Elijah Oloruntoba said “it is our humble submission that the some of the grounds of the application are incompetent, especially ground one, which is against the Evidence Act and should be struck out.

While, K. Abdulkarim, counsel for the 6th said he was not opposed to trying the suspects in secret but was against some of the grounds. “Ordinarily we are not opposed to secret trial but we pray the court to expunge paragraph 4A of the affidavit that offends provisions of the Evidence Act.

“Section 150 of the Evidence Act of 2011 and Section 36 of the Constitution as amended said affidavit shall not contain extraneous facts

“An accused is presumed to be innocent until the court says so. But ground one of the application sworn to by the prosecution assumed my client to be guilty even before he is tried.”
Labaran had countered that the defendants’ counsel did not oppose all the sections of the application but ground one and paragraph 4A of the affidavit.

“Drawing inference from their submissions my Lord, assuming the Honourable Court expunges paragraph 4A in the affidavit and ground one there will be other paragraphs which the counsel did not object to. Section 115 (1) of the Evidence Act, every affidavit used in court should contain evidence of fact or knowledge, which he believed to be true.”

Justice Tsoho consequently struck out paragraph 4A and said that ground the defendants complained about does not affect the case.

He however reserved ruling on the prosecution counsel prayer to vary its easier order that remanded the defendants in Kuje, adding they should be allowed to remain in the cell of DSS because of security challenge at Kuje Prison.

The Judge reserved ruling till April 25.