By Ameh Ejekwonyilo
Abuja
A year after the gruesome killing of 75 persons and injuring of several others by a bomb explosion at a crowded bus station in Nyanya, a suburb of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, the trial of the alleged mastermind of the act, Mr. Aminu Sadiq Ogwuche, and six others, is yet to fully commence.
At the scheduled commencement of the trial yesterday before the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja, the first accused, Ogwuche through his lawyer, Ahmed Raji (SAN), decried what he termed the federal government’s “delay tactics” to keep the suspects in detention unnecessarily.
Raji told the presiding judge, Justice Ahmed Mohammed, that the prosecution counsel, Mr. Mohammed Diri, who is the Director of Public Prosecution at the Federal Ministry of Justice, was deliberately delaying the full commencement of the suspects’ trial by filing fresh applications to stall the matter.
Earlier, the prosecution counsel had brought a fresh application to modify the already granted partial secret trial of Ogwuche and the others to completely shield prosecution witnesses.
Ogwuche, Ahmed Abubakar, Mohammed Ishaq, Ya’u Saidu (alias Kofar Rama); Anas Isa, Adamu Yusuf and Nasir Abubakar are facing terrorism charges and the prosecution team was billed to call their witnesses yesterday.
At the resumed trial yesterday, a representative of the prosecution counsel, Mr. M. Ogunsina, told the court that he had a motion dated and filed on April 9, seeking to modify the order of the court made on March 18, 2015, which granted partial secret trial of the suspects.
Specifically, the federal government prayed the court to direct the use of screens to shield the prosecution witnesses to protect them from public view but to allow only the lead counsel to the accused person access to view the facial identities of the prosecution witnesses.
Secondly, the court should permit the witnesses protected access to the court room through a non-public route.
In a five-paragraph affidavit in support of the motion, the deponent stated that failure to grant it would affect the witnesses’ willingness to sacrifice and give evidence for fear of their lives.
However, Raji and five other counsel said they were served with the motion in court yesterday and it was not ripe for hearing.
He further said the prosecution counsel delibera-tely served the motion on the defence counsel in court in order to abort yesterday’s proceedings.
The defence counsel also said that the application was in bad faith, considering that it was filed since April 9 but served on the defence counsel on the date of hearing.
In his ruling, Justice Mohammed adjourned the suit till May 11, 2015 to hear the application.
