By Aminata Phidelia Allie
Alleged victim in the on-going rape trial of sacked deputy minister of education, Mahmoud Tarawally has narrated some grisly accounts to the High Court presided over by Justice Abdulai Cham on what allegedly transpired between them.
The disgraced minister was making his third appearance on four counts bordering on rape and assault.
The 24-year-old university student, who testified behind curtains, told the court that she was invited on 9 September last year by the then deputy minister to bring to his office her results and travel documents for an international scholarship.
At the office, she said the accused introduced her to the secretary of the scholarship programme as his younger sister, to his personal assistant and to a group of people and later told her to wait in his office.
“When I got tired of sitting in the office, I took the original documents and left but the minister followed me and offered me a ride which I accepted”, she said, adding that the accused firmly locked the car doors and instructed his driver not to let her out.
“He threatened to sack his driver if he let me out. He then took me to Kingtom instead of my home. Inside a room in the house at Handel Street, we ate the food he had bought on the way after which I made attempts to leave but he drew and pushed me into the bed, slapped me and forcefully had sex with me”, she testified.
During preliminary investigations before magistrate Komba Kamanda of Court No. 2 in Freetown, the victim had also alleged that the minister promised to get her a car, a house, a shop and everything else she desired but that she had insisted on getting a scholarship to study abroad.
She had also claimed she didn’t fight when the minister asked her into the house where she was allegedly raped because “I didn’t want to create a scene, considering his status as a government minister and my friend’s boyfriend”.
Mahmoud Tarawallie was accused of rape in September of last year and was later sacked by the president. After spending sometime on remand at the Pademba Road Prison in Freetown, he was granted bail and the matter subsequently committed to the High Courts of Sierra Leone for proper trial.
He was granted bail after his first appearance before Justice Cham.
Meanwhile, defense lawyers could not go through with cross examination and the matter was therefore adjourned to April 3 this year.
(C) Politico 20/03/14
