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Sierra Leone Telegraph: 23 July 2024:
The treason trial of several opposition APC members and supporters, including Amadu Koita Makalo, came to an end this week, after the Jury found all accused guilty of several treasonous crimes against the State and murder.
They were accused of plotting and taking part in what the government describes as an attempt to overthrow the government of President Bio on the 26th of November 2023.
Amadu Koita Makalo (Photo), Sergeant Mohamed Jalloh, Mohamed Sallue Kamara, Ramatu Kanda Conteh, Alimatu Hassan Bangura, Hassan Leigh, Mohamed Wurrie, Assistant Superintendent of Police Ibrahim Sesay, Tamba Yamba, Kabba Kamara, and Abdul Sorie Hassan Kamara were found guilty on Counts 9, 10, 11, 12,15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20.
Verdicts are pending on Counts 13 and 14, involving Bai Mamoud Bangura, who was granted bail due to poor health.
Each of the accused have been sentenced to life in prison.
Defence Counsel, Ady Macauly said he will take his appeal to the Appeals Court against the sentences handed down by Justice Kamanda at the High Court in Freetown.
I sincerely hope that Bio and his Paopa regime are closely following the dramatic events unfolding in Bangladesh and drawing the necessary conclusions. These events have forced the South Asian country’s authoritarian Prime Minister to flee in the face of mounting and unstoppable pressure from her people, who are no longer willing to tolerate her oppressive grip on power.
As notable Egyptian political activist Wael Ghonim succinctly put it during the early 2010s Arab Spring, “the power of the people is greater than the people in power.” In other words, after years of violent political repression, coupled with untold hardship, endemic corruption, and incompetent governance, people will eventually rise, risk their lives, confront tyranny, and declare enough is enough.
The fleeing Bangladeshi Prime Minister should consider herself fortunate to have found refuge in the neighbouring state of India. Some of her supporters back home have not been so lucky, becoming targets of vengeful, murderous rage from some protestors.
If Bio and his Paopa regime ignore the Bangladeshi Prime Minister’s hasty and ignominious departure, thinking the political drama in a distant South Asian nation has no bearing on Sierra Leone’s politics, they do so at their own peril.
To be forewarned is to be forearmed.
Who in their right mind ever imagined a different outcome? A supine and subservient judicial system, forever beholden to a despotic executive branch, as expected, bends over backwards to execute the latter’s dirty work. Bio and his regime might consider themselves all-powerful and supreme, believing their will to be divine, enabling them to decide which political opponents to physically eliminate and which to imprison indefinitely. However, such delusions of omnipotence and invincibility are bound to end in tears, if not worse. You cannot hold an entire nation’s destiny to ransom forever. The inflexible will and iron fist they excel in wielding have inherent fissures and vulnerabilities—cracks that will inevitably bring the whole edifice of tyrannical power tumbling down. This is because in the final analysis, the people of Sierra Leone will have the last word. Their will, as God’s, will be done.