Khalifa Bojang was freed on a single charge of possession of prohibited drugs for the purpose of drug trafficking after his lawyer, Ida Drameh made a submission of ‘no case to answer’.
However, the prosecution, FM Colley said the Drug Law Enforcement Agency, Gambia, DLEAG, was going to appeal the decision and asked the court to order for Mr Bojang to be remanded in custody.
But the magistrate refused the request and set Mr Bojang, free, stating: “The application made by the prosecution is hereby dismissed. The accused must be set at liberty forthwith. The accused, an innocent man has been set at liberty whose right is protected and entrenched under the 1997 Constitution. I must say that I am not bound to follow the decisions of my learned colleagues as they were merely persuasive.”
However when Mr Bojang stepped out of the courtroom, the agents pounced on him in the court premises while he was standing by his lawyer. His lawyer unsuccessfully demanded his release and said she will take action against the officers and she took photographs of the melee involving her client.
Mr Bojang was arrested in 2012 and put on trial for being in possession of 85kg, 500g of Cannabis sativa. He pleaded not guilty. He was set free after the magistrate ruled that the prosecution did not establish that the accused was in possession of the four bags containing suspected cannabis. “I believed that the evidences were debunked and further discredited under cross-examination. The evidence is loaded with doubts that I can’t resolve. I cannot convict the accused on the grounds that the evidence of [some prosecution witnesses] are unreliable. The prosecution has not made their case against the accused to sufficiently require him to enter defence.”
]]>
