By Olimatou Coker
Twenty-six year old Binta Jallow of Brikama has been convicted on three counts of drug possession after attempting to smuggle prohibited substances into Mile 2 Prison.
On Thursday, Principal Magistrate M Krubally of Banjul sentenced her to a fine of D50,000 on each count, in default to serve three one-year prison terms.
Delivering the sentence, Krubally said attempting to smuggle drugs into a prison “has the potential of encouraging criminality within the prison system”.
On 16th March, Ms Jallow visited the prison to deliver food to a remanded inmate and during routine security screening, officers discovered a plastic bag concealed in a food bowl containing cannabis, hashish, and Clonazepam.
When arraigned on 23rd March, Binta pleaded guilty.
But when she reappeared on 8th April this time represented by Lawyer AJ Njie, she requested to change her plea to not guilty. The magistrate rejected the application, and at the end of the trial, Binta was found guilty. In her mitigation plea, she told the court she had two young children, a four-year-old boy and a two-year-old girl whose care she was solely responsible for, as her husband had left the country on the “back way” and had not returned.
She said her parents were also abroad, her mother in England, her father in the United States and that she managed transactions on their behalf. She implored the court for mercy, claiming she had been given the bowl by a man named Ousman Ceesay and had no knowledge that drugs were concealed inside. She vowed she would not recommit the offence.
Magistrate Krubally said smuggling narcotics into a prison, carries “uniquely serious societal implications threatening the integrity of a detention facility, emboldening those already serving sentences, and undermining the rule of law” before imposing the D150,000 fine.
