Prison Officers Granted Bail

FOROYAA Newspaper (Serrekunda)

Mamadou Dem

17 June 2011

Four Prison officers, namely Aboulie Bojang, Solo Manga, Buba Badjie and Bakary Jammeh, involved in an alleged criminal offence, were on Thursday granted bail in the sum three hundred thousand dalasi (D300, 000) with one Gambian surety, each of whom must deposit a national Identity Card and swear to an affidavit of means.

The accused persons were granted bail when Combeh Gaye Coker, counsel for the first and second accused persons (Aboulie Bojang, Solo Manga), told the court that she was adopting her previous application for the accused persons to be granted bail which was not objected to by the state prosecutor Mam N Jobe.

Testifying as the first prosecution witness (PW1), Omar Drammeh told the court that he works with the National Drug Enforcement Agency and that he is NCA1 by rank. He testified that he can recognize the accused persons and that he happened to know them when they were invited to the NDEA Holgam unit.

He said when the fourth accused person, Bakary Jammeh, was invited, he (Drammeh) was instructed by his superior to take a cautionary statement from him.

Drammeh told the court that during the cause of obtaining the said statement from the accused he invited an independent witness called Alexandra Hackman to the Holgam office.

He said Jammeh was cautioned in English and which was later translated to him in the Mandinka language and after which he (Jammeh) thumb printed and signed and the independent witness also signed.

At this juncture, state prosecutor Jobe applied to tender the cautionary statement as an exhibit. When the document was shown to Jammeh, he acknowledged having thumb printing on it but disagreed with having witnessed the independent witness signing the said document in his presence.

The cautionary statement of the fourth accused person was admitted and marked as exhibit A.

Readers could recall that the aforesaid persons are charged with eight counts of criminal offences namely, destroying evidence, introduction or removal of prohibited articles into and from Prison, official corruption and conspiracy to commit misdemeanor, contrary to section 369 of the Criminal Code.

The four accused persons had earlier pleaded not guilty as charged. However, the fifth accused, Saidou Kujabi, is said to be at large.

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