Ali Ndume, yesterday told the Federal High Court, Abuja, that he had no case to answer in the alleged sponsorship of terrorism charge levelled against him by the Federal Government.
Court discharges insurgency suspect as FG amends charge
The immediate past Senate Leader, Ali Ndume, yesterday told the Federal High Court, Abuja, that he had no case to answer in the alleged sponsorship of terrorism charge levelled against him by the Federal Government.
Ndume told Justice Gabriel Kolawole that the government had not in anyway established a prima facie case against him or linked him with any crime. In a no-case submission argued by his counsel, Rickey Tarfa (SAN), Ndume insisted that the charges brought against him by the government has not been proved beyond reasonable doubt as required by law at the end of the prosecution case.
The senator admitted that he had contact with the dreaded Boko Haram sect and that the contact came into being when he was appointed into presidential committee on security matters by the government to negotiate for peace with the terrorist group.
He maintained that the charges against him were unjust and unfair because he passed the report of his contact with the terrorists to the then Vice President Namadi Sambo and the then Director-General of Department of State Services (DSS).
Ndume further told the court that the charge of failure to disclose information on the workings of Boko Haram could not be sustained against him because the prosecution did not link any evidence to that effect.
He, therefore, asked the court to strike out the charges against Ndume on the ground that no prima facie case had been established against him to warrant his going to defend himself.
But the prosecution counsel, Grace Okafor, urged the court to compel Ndume to open his defence in the charges against him on the account that the Federal Government witnesses have effectively linked him with the crime.
Okafor said that Ndume, in his own statement, tendered and admitted in court, confirmed that he had enormous information on Boko Haram, which he refused to disclose to government.
Justice Kolawole after taking arguments from the two parties adjourned ruling till July 4, 2017. In another development, a Federal High Court in Abuja, presided over by Justice John Tsoho, has discharged a Boko Haram suspect, Usman Abubakar (a.k.a Mugiratu), who was arraigned by the Federal Government alongside six others on an 11-count charge bothering on abduction and murder.
At the resumed trial yesterday, the prosecuting counsel, Mr. Shuaibu Labaran, notified the court of an amended charge that the prosecution has nothing against the sixth defendant.
He, therefore, prayed the court for an adjournment to enable him produce two new defendants who would subsequently take their plea and face trial. Justice Tsoho, in a short ruling, struck out the name of the sixth defendant who had spent five years in custody as an accused person.
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