By Mohamed Foday Conteh
Justice Ivan Sesay has sentenced Ibrahim Mansaray, 36, to 50 years imprisonment for killing a 40-year-old US citizen, Massah Kaikai in 2018.
Mansaray made his final appearance at the High Court in Freetown on Thursday 11th November this year.
The Prosecution led a total of six witnesses which included the landlord, the state Pathologist and the man who dug up the discreet grave where Kaikai’s remains were buried.
The landlord Samuel Carlton-Carew told the court that he first knew Mansaray in 2015 when Kaikai introduced him. He said the deceased in June 2018 paid a 6-month rent for his house on Lower Pipeline Off Wilkinson Road in Freetown.
The landlord said that sometime in August the accused met him at home and requested for the part-payment made by the deceased as rent. He said that the accused told him that the deceased had travelled to France and had no intention of returning to Sierra Leone.
Carlton-Carew said he refused to grant the accused the money and told him that he has no business with him. He said when he later visited his Pipeline property, he found out that the sitting room looked rough and that one window curtain was missing.
The witness later said that he was at the scene when the Police dug the earth in the compound and took out a skeleton that was shrouded with the missing window curtain in the deceased’s sitting room.
State Pathologist at the time, Dr. Simeon Owizz Koroma testified in court that his findings from the autopsy revealed that Kaikai’s death was ‘neither accidental nor suicidal but homicidal’. He further referred to the killing as a ‘brutal’ one.
The pathologist said that he performed the post-mortem after the decomposed body of Kaikai had been exhumed at the back of the house.
The evidence in court revealed that the accused called a man named James Bangura to dig a pit in the compound.
Bangura who was the first prosecution witness said the accused cautioned him not to show anyone the location of the spot that he had dug.
By then it was too late because Bangura had already made known the location to the police and others.
Justice Sesay, in his address to the jurors, pointed out to the aforementioned evidence by Bangura. He told the jury to look at the fact of the matter and determine whether Mansaray was guilty or not.
The Appeal Court judge retired the 11-man jury at 11:50. The jurors later returned at 12:19.
Mansaray was charged with three counts of murder, burying a human body in a place other than a cemetery and larceny in a dwelling house.
The foreman of the 11-man jury returned a guilty verdict on all three offences against Mansaray.
Justice Sesay sentenced the accused to 50 years in prison on count one and a fine of five hundred thousand Leones (Le 500,000) on count two. He also imposed a 10-year sentence on the accused for count three.
He said that both terms of imprisonment will run concurrently and that the accused shall pay the fine for count two before his release from prison.
Kaikai was murdered by Mansaray who was her fiancée in early August 2018. The matter was initially investigated as a kidnapping by the police. It took the police and two FBI agents from the US eight months to discover the remains of Kaikai in the compound of the house she had rented.
Copyright © Politico Online 12/11/21
