By Septimus Senessie in Kono
Police at the Tankoro Division in the eastern Kono District have arrested and transferred to the Criminal Investigation Department headquarters in Freetown 11 people among them Sia Sam Bayraytay, younger sister of Vice President Samuel Sam Sumana.
Police in Freetown said the group of eleven suspects, including local authorities like Councillor Kai Lawrence Mbayo of Ward 63, the ruling party All Peoples Congress youth chairman, Mohamed Bandagbara, were arrested following a protest that left two people dead with bullet wounds.
Sources in Kono said some 35 others, mostly children between the ages of 13 and 16, were among those arrested in a separate swoop on the streets of Koidu town while demanding the reopening of schools in the last week of October. Except the last arrests, which the police said were related to riotous conduct, no reasonswere advanced as to why the local authorities were arrested.
Local Unit Commander of Tankoro Police Division, Chief Superintendent David Sahid Koroma, said they had more names on their list to be arrested. He declined to give reasons why they were arresting people, saying “the matter is premature to warrant any statement.”
After an extraordinary emergency council meeting jointly held by the Kono district and City Council at the offices of the Koidu city Mayor, to discuss in particular the arrest of Councillor Mbayo, they released a position paper on 27 October, signed and endorsed by 37 out of 40councillors who strongly condemned the arrest of their colleague.
They said that the arrests were “arbitrary and unconstitutional. This act of arrest is a gross violation of human rights and tantamount to the exercise of arbitrary power that treacherously walks against the good practice of democracy by a nation that has just come out of war,” a portion of the paper stated.
They said they were not against the police enforcement of the rule of law governing the country, but insisted that the councillor in question was not in Kono District during the Ebola riots.
They argued that their colleague was with the Koidu Mayor,Saa Emerson Lamina, in Freetown on official functions and claimed that the police was working on the “order from above” to humiliate the councillor on matters he was not involved in.
Although the LUC declined to give reasons to the two councils who called at his office, the position paper also stated that the arrest of the councillor was sanctioned by orders from above.
They claimed that latest arrest could not be unconnected with the 2012 riots that involved governmentminister Musa Tarawallie, Councillor Mbayo and others in Kono district. The statement said the councillor was among those “acquitted and discharged by Magistrate Kamanda for lack of evidence.”
Ahmed Ibrahim Sahr Bockarie, Head of the Kono District civil society group Campaign for Just Mining, also condemned “police high handedness on the Kono people.” He alleged that the unprecedented killing of armless civilians by police officers during peaceful demonstration was out of the way and worth the intervention of International Human Rights organisations.
He claimed that since 2007 the district had recorded eight deaths while dozens had sustained injuries caused by police and no action had been taken against them.
© Politico 30/10/14
