By Aminata Phidelia Allie
Magistrate Komba Kamanda of Court No.2 in Freetown has warned the police not to charge cases to court on grounds of human rights but rather based on evidence.
He made the comment while hearing a case of alleged human trafficking yesterday, March 10, involving a Togolese and a Ghanaian both of whom are facing a 3-count charge of human trafficking, harbouring and unlawful entry into Sierra Leone.
Alongside his Togolese friend, Frank Mangeh was detained for 14 days in a police cell at both the New England and the Criminal Investigations Department without charge.
According to the police, the accused entered Sierra Leone without a valid passport, trafficked and harboured a certain Patricia Nwuku.
In her statement to the police, Patricia described herself as a prostitute in Ghana and identified the accused as her husband, who had had her family’s consent to take her out of Ghana.
She said after passing through Togo, they stayed in Guinea for about seven months but were later advised to come to Sierra Leone “because it has friendly people and they speak English unlike Guinea”.
The pregnant Patricia had also testified in court that she was never forced by anyone to travel with the accused, adding that all that happened was that they had had a little argument which resulted in her leaving Frank’s house to stay with a friend.
She said that in a bid to beg her husband’s forgiveness, a human rights officer got involved alleging that the man had abandoned his wife, adding that because the husband had refused the officer’s plea, he (the officer) reported the matter as a case of human trafficking to the New England police.
To this, the magistrate said “police officers, who are so good at creating charges, didn’t even bother to investigate the matter further but went on to detain the man for no reason at all." He said the countries mentioned "are all ECOWAS countries and one does not necessarily have to own a passport to get into them, they are ECOWAS citizens. Why not arrest all those shiners on the streets as well because I am sure most of them do not have passports. If you must arrest, it must be with good reasons".
He wondered how "a mother of two, who is pregnant with her third child be said to have been trafficked by her own husband” before dismissing the case.
(C) Politico 11/03/14
