By Allieu Sahid Tunkara and Janet A. Sesay
Sahr Anthony Sinnah and Prince George Hughes have walked free from charges of aiding and abetting the commission of felony to wit treason.
Thanks to the fairness of the Justice Stevens and the 12 jurors who presided over the lengthy and protracted trial.
The judge seems to agree with the submission of the lead defence, Dr Abdulai Conteh that one person cannot commit an offence of treason.
The lead defence made reference to the 1968 coup, being the first military coup in Sierra Leone to support his claim that one person cannot commit a treasonable offence.
The competence and painstaking effort of the defence team headed by the two former Attorneys-General Dr Abdulai Osman Conteh and Joseph Fitzgerald Kamara is worth mentioning.
The defence team succeeded in convincing the bench to quash 14 out of the 16-count indictment.
The two officials who were before Justice Stevens for the aforementioned offences are employees of the Commission on Small Arms.
They have been cleared of all charges, and by law they should get back to work as usual.
However, none of the freed men have indicated that they would go back to the commission to serve the state.
Almost invariably, had it not been the two counts for which Alfred Paolo Conteh was convicted, he too would have walked as a free man.
However, it is better off because as the court did not agree with the prosecution on the treason charge which carries the death penalty.
By virtue the judgement, Alfred Paolo Conteh will spend two years behind bars.
Back to the two former accused persons, Hughes and Sinnah, no doubt, are in a state trauma after a little over three months behind bars.
The question most Sierra Leoneans are asking after the two men have been set free is whether Sierra Leone’s legal system recognises compensation of accused persons found not guilty of charges for which they are arraigned.
Virtually, Sierra Leone Legal system seems very much silent on the issue of compensation of accused persons freed from the claws of the law.
Legal analysis on the question of compensation was made five years ago by Julius Nye Cuffie, lead defence counsel in the trial of 14 soldiers by a military tribunal at the Cockeril Defence headquarters.
His exact statement at the time was that the benefit an accused person enjoys after a judicial process is the restoration of his liberty.
Counsel Cuffie made the legal analysis after 14 soldiers attached to the 5th Brigade in the North-Eastern headquarters of Makeni were set free by Judge Advocate Otto During.
The soldiers were arrested in Makeni following allegations of planning a mutiny against former President Koroma (then sitting President) and to take over the administration of the state.
During the military trials, ‘alibis’ raised by the accused persons remained unchallenged throughout the proceedings.
The unchallenged ‘alibis’ and bad charges, no doubt, became the bases on which the all the accused persons were set free.
The bad charges and ‘alibis’ were echoed and re-echoed by the Judge Advocate.
He corrected the prosecution team by saying that one can incite another to take part in a mutiny, but cannot incite one person to mutiny.
He said one person cannot commit mutiny against the presidency.
In the areas of ‘alibis,’ the Judge Advocate drew the prosecution’s attention to the accused persons’ ‘alibis’ which, he said, were successful.
The alibis, the judge said, constituted doubts which were resolved for the benefit of the accused persons.
The accused soldiers were ecstatic for regaining their freedom from the gallows and willing to go back to the army.
But, one thing came out and that thing was compensation but it never came to them because it was not part of the laws of Sierra Leone.
Another case was that of Isha Johansen and Chris Kamara, President of Sierra Football Association and secretary-General respectively who were slammed with corruption charges over four years ago.
The two officials were charged with conspiracy to commit a corruption offence and dishonestly misappropriation of funds meant to conduct an MRI test on Sierra Leonean footballers.
After many years of battling the case at the court, in April, 2019, she and her Secretary-General were found not guilty by a high court and were not compensated.
Johansen and Kamara were completely acquitted and discharged of the crimes owing to bad charges by the country’s anti-graft agency.
The bad charges were emphasised by the Presiding judge, Justice Reginald Fynn who declined to agree with the prosecution that the MRI funds were misappropriated as they alleged.
The judge made it clear that although the funds were not utilised for the intended purpose, that is the MRI test, they were used for an SLFA interest.
Justice Fynn’s exact statement was: “The acts of the accused persons do not amount to corruption owing to the presence of a legally qualifying word ‘dishonestly.’
The Judge also told the ACC prosecution team that since the substantive offence of dishonestly misappropriating public funds did not hold, the second count of conspiracy should also succumb to the same fate.
The above-mentioned instances indicate that the accused persons always are set free owing investigative inefficiencies on the part of investigators.
The sad situation calls for the initiation and implementation of a compensation policy for those not found guilty of crimes after spending months or years behind bars.
Most Sierra Leoneans believe that if the supposed compensation policy becomes a reality, a great number of citizens would be saved from frivolous charges.
The call may sound strange to others, but to some, it is appropriate as Sierra Leone has come a long way in its justice system.