By Saio Marrah
A 27-year-old man who was convicted of stealing a motorbike from his friend has been jailed for two years. Mohamed Kabba’s sentence covers also from the time he was first remanded in custody on the 5th of February 2022.
He was found guilty of fraudulently converting into his own use the bike which was the property of Mohamed Massaquoi at Calaba Town, east of Freetown.
Between the 1st and 30th of April 2018, at Pipe Line, Calaba town in Freetown, Kabba reportedly requested from Massaquoi the TVS bike with registration number AOE-550 for commercial purposes.
The bike then was valued at Old Leones 8,200,000 (eight million two hundred thousand).
After it was delivered to him, the accused took it to Guinea where it was sold to a man at a price of 3,000,000 (three million old Leones) and used the money to travel to Burkina Faso, later to Algeria and then Libya. He wanted to travel to Italy, but because the tide at sea was very high, he could not continue and was deported to Sierra Leone.
Before judgment was passed, Kabba asked for mercy and told the judge he was a first-time offender with plans to travel to France.
High Court Judge Monfred Sesay acknowledged the plea of one of the defence counsels, Cecilia Tucker, on the grounds that the convict was a first-time offender who did not waste the court’s time in admitting his guilt.
But Justice Sesay told Kabba that fraud was what he opted for, in place of his job as a driver at Human Resource Management Office (HRMO), and that he chose to be in prison instead. The maximum punishment for the crime is seven years.
Copyright © 2023 Politico Online (03/02/23)
