By Francis H. Murray
Sylvia Blyden, former minister of Social Welfare walked out of a magistrate court in Freetown a free woman on Monday, 16th November after state prosecutors dropped all charges against her and her co-accused Hussain Muckson Sesay.
Attorney General Anthony Brewah told magistrate Hannah Bonnie that the State was no longer continuing with the matter and that all charges against the accused persons were been dropped. The Magistrate then acquitted and discharged the accused persons and ordered that all exhibits and documents concerning the accused persons in respect of the matter be returned to them.
Speaking to journalists shortly after the event AG Brewah said the decision was reached “out of President Bio’s magnanimity and in fulfillment of his manifesto pledge in 2018 relating to the repeal of the criminal and seditious libel provisions of the Public Order Act of 1965.
He said: “President Julius Maada Bio instructed me to discontinue this case knowing what has happened in respect of the Criminal Libel Law. The government has repealed it, government was not forced to do it but out of the President’s own promise in his manifesto that he was going to take this particular law out of the law books. And pursuant to that, he gave instructions that all matters touching and concerning seditious libel must be discontinued.’’
Sylvia Blyden, the first beneficiary of the President’s directive to discontinue all existing seditious and criminal libel cases had a contrary. She told Politico outside the courtroom that allegations against her were not only “cooked-up and the state didn’t prove them in court, but also a major threat to the country’s democratic credentials.”
She said: ‘‘what happened to me is a disgrace to the highest order, that a so-called responsible government can kidnap a woman who is investigating murders that happened of innocent prisoners in custody. You all saw what happened in this country.”
Information Minister Mohamed Rahman Swaray in a press release noted that the AG’s decision was aimed at broadening and deepening the democratic space and free speech.
Sylvia was jointly charged with Hussain Muckson Sesay, a student of Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone for publishing alleged defamatory messages against President Bio and the country which were ‘‘considered likely to injure the reputation of the president and the country.’’
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