Boko Haram sponsorship: No secret trial for Ndume – Court

By Ikechukwu Nnochiri, Vanguard

The Abuja Division of the Federal High Court, yesterday, refused an application for the trial of Senator Mohammed Ali Ndume who is accused of sponsoring the Boko Haram sect, to be conducted in secret.

Mohammed Ndume

The application was filed by the office of the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mohammed Bello Adoke, SAN.

The Federal Government had alleged that Ndume who is currently representing Borno South Federal Constituency in the Senate, was the one that hitherto furnished the sect with information that aided their terrorist operations in Nigeria.

He was among other things alleged to have furnished them with the telephone numbers of top government officials and Judges, among which included the phone number of the AGF himself.

The sect was said to have called some of those whose numbers were given to them and threatened to visit them with ‘fire and brimstone’.

The government had earlier tendered a proof of evidence that indicated that Ndume who is answering to a 4-count criminal charge, made contacts with the Boko Haram sect 73 times.

Though some call logs and three digital video discs (DVDs), containing call-data records, as well as documents containing findings based on investigations carried out by a Special Investigation Panel (SIP) set up by the Department of State Security, DSS, were previously admitted into evidence by the trial court, it was subsequently expunged from the trial record on the order of the Appeal Court  in Abuja.

Meantime, following the decision of the Federal Government to produce two more witnesses to testify against the accused lawmaker, it urged the court to order a closed-door hearing on the matter.

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Boko Haram sponsorship: No secret trial for Ndume – Court