By Aminata Phidelia Allie
Sacked Deputy Minister of Education, Mahmoud Tarawallie today made his second appearance at the magistrate court on four counts bordering on rape and assault. He is accused by a university student of raping her last week and has been in detention since. He was eventually sacked by the president. Magistrate Tonia Barnette refused his bail application because she said she needed “to consider” the bail application by the defense. This came minutes after the alleged victim had testified, unprotected, as the second prosecution witness. The 24-year-old university student told the court that she was invited on 9 September by the minister to bring to his office her results and travel documents for an international scholarship. After photocopying the documents at his secretary’s desk, she said, the accused suggested that they both go out to somewhere and relax, but “I refused, reminding him he was my friend’s boyfriend”. “He even promised to get me a car, a house, a shop and everything else I could ask for but I insisted that I wanted the scholarship to study overseas”, she told the court. She said the accused introduced her to the secretary of the scholarship programme as his younger sister and to a students’ union group as a personal assistant, furthering that when she got tired of sitting in the office, she took her original documents and left but the accused followed her, offering her a ride which she accepted. The witness went on that when she was taken to Kingtom instead of her home, she silently followed him into the house and into a room “because I didn’t want to create a scene considering his status as a government minister and my friend’s boyfriend”. She said the minister told her the house at Kingtom was a friend’s. She further testified that when she later decided to leave the room later, the accused grabbed her telling her she wouldn’t leave without them having sex, and “he slapped me several times when I shouted, though no one came to my rescue”. PW2 went on that she was pinned down to the bed while the accused undressed her and forcefully had sex with her. After the act, she said, the accused refused to let her out of the room until she washed her face and combed her hair. After a long struggle however, she added that she was able to fight her way out of the room and she went straight to her boyfriend’s place at Circular Road after which she spoke to a journalist before reporting to the police at New England Ville. During cross examination by defense lawyer Sulaiman Kabbah Koroma, the alleged victim said she met someone sitting at the dining as she ran out of the room, though no one came to her rescue when she had shouted for help. She denied any claim to the pants found at the alleged crime scene by police investigators, clarifying that she had hers on when she left the scene. She said the pants she had on on that day was her boyfriend’s. She also admitted to living in the house of the brother of the accused at Portee in the east of Freetown but denied having had any relationship with him. Renewing their bail application, defence lawyer pointed out that the country’s constitution ruled against a bail only in cases of murder and treason “far from which the instant case is”. He was remanded until Friday while the court reviews the bail application. © Politico Online 19/08/13
