Former leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), Henry Okah’s bid to extricate himself from links with the October 1 bombings in Abuja suffered a major set back yesterday.

The Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court hearing his case refused to allow him view evidence being used by the prosecution against him.

Hearing on his bail application has also been fixed for November 4.
Magistrate Hein Louw, in her ruling, merely granted Okah’s defence team access to the hard drives of computers and handsets seized from his home during an October 2, raid.

In Louw’s words: “I order that a mirror copy image of computer hard drives, cellphone hard drives and memories be made available to the applicant in no later than three working days. In due course, the defence will have opportunity to access such information.”

The prosecution had told the court on Thursday that Okah had been in contact with the people who coordinated the Abuja bombings in which 12 people were killed and 36 injured.

Reading from an affidavit compiled by investigating officer, Lieutenant Colonel Graeme Zeeman, State prosecutor, Shaun Abrahams, had told the court that Okah, while in South Africa, had instructed his co-conspirators to drive the cars to where the attacks would be launched.

But in a responding affidavit, Okah denied his involvement in the attacks and asked the court to grant him permission to view the evidence. “Put your money where your mouth is. Show us the evidence,” Okah’s lawyer, Rudi Krause, demanded before the ruling by Louw.

Abrahams,however, argued that granting Okah access to the information would put the defence in a position to influence Zeeman’s investigation. “If he has access to people we have here, he can find out who they have been contacting,”.

He pointed out that if Okah could phone cable television station, Al Jazeera while he was in a Johannesburg prison, he could contact anyone.

While offering to give Okah access to information found on his hard drive and a copy of records from his cellphone, he maintained that the police investigation was only 22 days old and that letting Okah’s lawyers “peek over the shoulders of investigating authorities” would prejudice their case.

Okah faces charges of engaging in terrorist activities, conspiracy to do so, and delivering, placing and detonating an explosive device. Okah denied all the charges as well as being a senior member of the MEND.
Also yesterday, Okah’s wife was docked for contempt of court because her phone rang during the hearing of the bail application of her husband.

However, in Abuja, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) yesterday kicked against the trial of the October 1 bombing suspects by the State Security Service (SSS) before a Chief Magistrate’s Court in Abuja.
NBA president, Joseph Daudu (SAN), said the security agency “cannot act as policemen or prosecutors in a criminal trial”.

Daudu spoke at the inauguration of three committees of the NBA which also coincided with the submission of the interim report of its electoral justice reform committee, chaired by Chief Mike Ahamba (SAN), in Abuja.

He said: “There is, according to the constitution, one police force. The SSS cannot and is not a police force. In saner societies, an SSS officer would lose his job once his identity is disclosed.

“It is supposed to be a secret service which operates secretly. The action of the SSS is hereby confounded; we hope that there will be no repeat of this ludicrous incident.”

Daudu berated the agency for shrouding the arraignment of the suspects in secrecy by barring lawyers and journalists from covering the court sitting.

“The implication of the conduct of these overzealous or misguided operatives is manifold.

“Firstly, denial of right to counsel is a grave breach of the fundamental right of the accused as well as an assault on the due process of law. It is a monumental embarrassment to the trial procedure in Nigeria that our officials can, by such misbehavior, taint a bonafide criminal proceeding irretrievably. By this conduct, you may have sealed the fate of criminal trial with this beginning.

“Secondly, the exclusion of journalists from criminal proceedings, no matter how serious, deprives Nigerians of their right to freedom of information.

“Thirdly, the Magistrate ought not to have engaged in judicial proceedings where it was apparent that the court had been barricaded and counsel excluded. What the Magistrate has unwittingly acceded to, is to render the entire proceedings a force devoid of the minimum standards of a criminal trial”, he said,
Also yesterday, The Nation gathered that five persons arrested with Charles Okah for alleged complicity in the bombings may have regained their freedom.

They are Boloebi (Charles Okah’s son); Sola Ladoja, a friend to Boloebi; Felix Kufre, a security man to Okah; Michael Williams and Larry Fafi.

Confirming the report, Ugochukwu Ezekiel and Oghenovo Otemu, who are counsel to the suspects, said they were released yesterday’s morning at the Lagos office of the SSS.
But phone calls to the SSS Director of Media, Marilyn Ogar, were not picked and a text message requesting her to confirm the story was never replied.

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