By Janet A. Sesay
Inspector Mohamed Jusu attached to the Cyber Office at the Criminal Investigations Department headquarters on Wednesday, 20th March, 2024, before Judge Advocate Mark Ngegba and Members of the Board read and played a voice message extracted from the phone of ninth accused, Idrissa Kallon, in an opened screen where he stated that they will be attacking the Bio led government on Saturday, 26th November, 2023.
According to Inspector Jusu, accused Idrissa Kallon sent the audio message to one of the coup members.
Jusu also read and played a voice message sixth accused Edward Koroma sent to eighth accused Eustace Neka that they had moved from Wilberforce to Cockerill, adding that they were heading to the JLU at Murray Town Barracks from where they will head to Pademba Road to free the prisoners. Jusu further testified that the conversation was made on 25th November, 2023, at 11hrs42.
Inspector Mohamed Jusu also informed the court from a tabular form displayed on a screen the areas where the different call logs were made by the accused persons.
After analysis, witness Jusu said he reduced his findings into a report.
He continued that he also sent a request to the Director General of the Correctional Centre dated 2nd December, 2023, for a CCTV footage.
He said after sending the request he received the CCTV footage on a flash drive, which he examined and found out that it contained the features common to CCTV images.
He said he played it severally taking several screen shots from different areas, including the building and humans that were in the prison’s CCTV footage.
Prior to that witness Jusu reiterated that he is attached to the Cyber Crime Unit at the Criminal Investigations Department headquarters in Freetown.
He said that he is the System and Data Analyst Officer at CID, adding that his role is to analyse digital evidence, retrieving and maintaining the integrity of such digital evidence, do forensic analysis of the digital evidence retrieved and put his observations and findings into a written form.
Inspector Jusu said he has served as a Cyber Analyst for the Sierra Leone Police since 2016.
The witness also recognised all the accused persons in the dock, adding that he came to know them during the failed 26th November, 2023 coup, add that he was part of the investigators that investigated the accused persons.
Witness Jusu continued that following the November 26 incident / failed coup attempt, a combined team of the RSLAF and Sierra Leone Police formed an investigation team to look into the matter, and he was one of the investigator selected to do the looking.
He said his specific task is to look into all digital evidence, adding that as a result of his assigned role, he together with his team retrieved mobile phones from the accused persons and others who were not in the court.
He added that some of the accused persons voluntarily turned in their mobile phones to the investigators and that all the mobile phones retrieved were handed over to him for safe keeping so that their integrity will not be challenged or tampered with.
‘My initial step was to put all the phones on flight mode so that any foreign matter will not enter the phone without my knowledge,’ he stated.
Witness Jusu continued that when he was ready to analyse the phones, he turned off the flight mode because some comments would not be delivered successfully being on flight mode.
He said his main motive for turning off the flight mode was to have access to the phones’ WhatsApp, gallery and the trash bins.
He furthered that to get the subscribers’ phone number from the SIM card the person has to press *98# and that if such command is applied, the Africell and Orange numbers of that SIM will be displayed on the phone.
He said for Q-cell the person should follow the command *06# to get the International Mobile Equipment Number which is called the IMEI number.
The witness furthered that having gotten the SIM numbers that were inserted in the phones, he sent a request via electronic mail to Africell, Orange and Q-cell companies and they in turn replied to him via the same email.
He said he observed the command to confirm the numbers that were given by the accused persons in order to know the incoming and outgoing calls and their positions when making those calls.
At this juncture, the witness was about to tender the email when defence counsel Julius M. Koffie objected to the tendering of the electronic email saying that the prosecution had not serve them the email documents, adding that they were taken by surprise.
State counsel Sesay replied that he has evidence containing a list of documents they served to the defence counsels including their signature acknowledging receipt of documents.
He said the document was served to the defence on diverse dates between 14th and 16th March, 2024, adding that their grounds for objection wouldn’t stand.
He furthered that the documents to be tendered were made by the witness, adding he is the author of the said documents.
Judge Advocate Mark Ngegba overruled the objection raised by the defence counsel. The said exhibit was produced and tendered marked as exhibits AH 1-4.
Inspector Jusu in further evidence said responses to the request were made by an official mail, which responses were downloaded in the form of an extra spreadsheet, adding that the analysis of those responses were held on three major issues, which are the incoming calls, outgoing calls and the places where the users were when making those calls.
The analyst he said also looked at the dates, particularly on the 25th and 26th November, 2023, and as a result of the fact highlighted the requests were printed individually as per quarry numbers.
He said because the extra sheets were a bunch of documents, he had to highlight issues about the 25th and 26th November, 2023.
The witness continued that apart from getting the seal numbers on the mobile phones of the accused persons, he received documents from the RSLAF which indicated that some of the numbers were used by the accused persons.
The documents he said helped him to be double sure that the numbers retrieve from the mobile phones were indeed numbers used by the accused persons, noting that he handed over the printed copies to the RSLAF since the investigation was a joint one.
He said he saved the downloaded documents on a flash drive which he was about to tender but defence counsel Julius Koffie again objected to the tendering of the downloaded documents on the grounds that the laptop which is the primary source of the information was not before the court.
He added that it will be unfair to their clients if such evidence was tendered in court.
State counsel Sesay in response said that it had not been the practice of the court to bring the primary source to court, noting that the witness is the author and maker of the said documents and there were no legal requirements as the documents were not in digital form.
He however urged the Judge Advocate to discountenance the objection raised by defence counsels.
The objection made by defence counsels was overruled again by the Mr Mark Ngegba.
Detective Inspector Jusu in further evidence said he examined the galleries of all the mobile phones of the accused persons and retrieved electronic evidential material, noting that he screenshot the said materials from the phones’ WhatsApp.
He said the screenshot materials were saved in the gallery of each mobile phone and saved in the internal memory portion of the screenshot.
The witness said the screenshot materials were retrieved from the phones and saved to the laptop, adding that he also retrieved voice notes from the phones’ platform examiner.
To respect the integrity of the material extracted, the witness said he used the software testing for integrity calls hash calculator.
The calculator he said helped him in maintaining that the materials or files retrieved were not tampered with, adding that if such files were tampered with it would show another result after the examination.
The screenshot materials and extracted photos retrieved from the mobile phones, he said, were printed. The findings he said were reduced into writing, signed and dated by him as the author.
The report of his findings were again produced and tendered as exhibit before the court to form part of the prosecution’s case.
He ended his testimony that the mobile phones of the accused were in the Cyber Lab for ongoing investigation. At this juncture, state counsel Sesay sought for an adjournment that the day was far gone. The matter was adjourned to today’s hearing.