By Amadou Jadama
as Sabally, Officer Commanding Brikama Police Station, has told the Brikama court that in the Gambia Police Force, senior officers are only queried but they should not be charged.
OC Sabally said this under cross examination by defense lawyer Lamin Camara in the trial of Chief Superintendent Muhammed Kanteh who is charged with negligence which he denied.
The witness, the fourth for the prosecution, was also asked about her activities and her relation to the station diary. She said the station diary keeps the day-to-day activities of the police station.
The said diary was tendered as evidence. Asked if the accused should have gone even after being told by the assistant commissioner not go, the witness replied that the accused should not have gone and if he insisted, disciplinary actions should have been taken against him in the form of a query but not a charge.
The defence counsel further asked her if all activities at the station are written in the station diary. “That is not true, not all activities are recorded in the station diary. I have taken the oath to say the truth,” Sabally told the court.
The witness was further asked whether she was aware that the accused person’s brothers had a problem and he left to attend to them. “Yes I was aware and I went to Buba Jassey, assistant commissioner of police and he told me about it.
When I asked him where is the accused person, he told me he had already left. I told him that he should not have allowed him to go,” she replied. The witness was further asked who has the responsibility to give permission to the accused person and she replied it should be his immediate boss.
But when Camara tried to ask the witness if she knows whether permission was given or not, police prosecutor Ensa Sarr raised an objection and the court ruled in favour of the prosecution. However, counsel Camara did succeed in asking the witness why she told Buba Jassey that he should not have allowed the accused person go and the witness replied that her reason was for the accused’s own safety and the fact that, as he had claimed, his ov,rn brothers were stabbed which could lead him to retaliate and the consequences could be severe.
