By Aisha Tamba
Police officer, sub-inspector Modou Lamin Sonko, yesterday told a magistrate court in Kanifing that the kidnapping story of Kemesseng Sanneh, alias Kexx, who is facing charges of giving false information was ‘too perfect to be true.’
Kexx was arrested last year following a case report he filed at a police station, alleging that unidentified people kidnapped him. The police later issued a statement suggesting his story was false and that he was in fact in a house with a marabout when the alleged kidnapping was supposed to have happened.
The matter was struck out by Magistrate Mam Samba Jallow who cautioned the police to put their house in order amid the continuous unavailability of witnesses in court.
Testifying in court as the case resumed yesterday before Mbeg Faal, Sub-Inspector Sonko who is the second prosecution witness, told the court that he was in charge of the police investigative department in Latrikunda and also served as a member of the team that investigated the matter.
According to the witness, Kexx gave two conflicting stories to the police and when he was brought to the police station, he was taken to the hospital by the police officers who were on duty for a medical check-up to see whether he was fine. The witness continued: “After making all these findings, a printout of his telephone records [both Qcell and Africell] was made to establish his location and the printout indicated that the phone went off at Latrikunda [Big Tree] which is not far from his residence and that the phone was all along with him. The only time the phone was switched on was at the police station. Going by the story, as I said initially, the story was too perfect to be true.”
The witness added that when he was confronted with the evidence, he admitted that he never left the compound and was never kidnapped. “Instead, he was with a marabout in his compound who gave him some charm mixed with some meat, which he shared with the marabout and that was the last thing he could remember before finding himself at the Christian cemetery in Latrikunda German.
“But before he could confess this to us, he caused us a lot of delay during our investigations. He could have told us this story but he instead claimed he was kidnapped,” the police witness told the court.
He added that due to the delay, they could not apprehend the marabout. He said Kexx gave them a number for the supposed marabout but when that person was contacted, he claimed that he was in Guinea Bissau. “So based on this, the investigators deemed it necessary to charge him for misleading the investigations,” he added.
Sub-inspector Jammeh was representing the IGP. The case continues.
