By Fatou Sowe
Pa Serign Mboop, an officer of the then national intelligence agency (NIA), has told the court how he watched Tamba Mansary beat a naked woman at the NIA.
Mboop, the tenth witness in the NIA 9 trial, further narrated he heard a woman crying just a few meters from where he was standing and that upon seeing the said lady, he observed that she was naked, crying and looked tired. “At that moment I saw Tamba Mansary going towards the lady and as he reached to her and wanted to kick her he fell. He later got up and picked a black object from his bag and started beating the lady.
I then ran back to the conference hall. I later know the lady to be Nogoi Njie,” the witness told the court.
He narrated that on 14 April 2016, around 5pm to 6pm, he was informed by his OC Lamin Ceesay that they were to stay in the office as they are to interview some people at the conference hall but he was not told who they were.
He said around 8pm he went outside to stretch his legs and as he stepped foot on the corridor, he heard a lady crying and saying in Mandinka “allow me to tie my wrapper”.
He was asked by the lead prosecutor Antouman Gaye to identify Tamba Mansary in the court and the witness walked towards the dock and identified him as the 7th accused person, who was observed to be in smiles.
The testimony of PW10 followed the extensive cross examination of PW9 (Kebba Secka) by defence lawyer C E Mene for Yankuba Badjie. During the cross examination Secka refuted the defence claim that Badjie was not at the door of the hall during the interview of the UDP demonstrators and insisted that Badjie was at the door and repeated the questions to the demonstrators.
Secka told the court he wrote a witness statement on 5 June 2017 at the police which was 14 months after the interview of the demonstrators and another witness statement on the 16 November 2017, which he said was an additional statement. Both statements were admitted in evidence as defence exhibits.
PW9 was pressed by the defence to state why it was necessary to write the said additional statement and he indicated he was asked by the prosecuting team to write the second witness statement as the first statement was not brief enough and he was asked to write exactly what happened in the hall during the interview.
The case continues today at noon.
