Indications emerged in Lagos yesterday that Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, a former Chief Security Officer (CSO) to the late General Sanni Abacha was still in detention because his defense counsel was arguing on the wrong side of the law. The Lagos State Solicitor General and Permanent Secretary, Lagos State Ministry of Justice, Mr. Pedro Lawal (SAN) made this revelation during a ministerial press briefing in Lagos yesterday.
He said that Al-Mustapha was still standing trial before Justice Ayoka Dada of the Lagos High Court for the alleged murder of Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, wife of Bashorun M.K.O. Abiola and could not be let off the legal hooks until his lawyer was able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he was innocent in all the charges against him.
He attributed the delay in the trial to frivolous applications by Al-Mustapha’s lawyer, Mr. Olalekan Ojo, and said that the trial would have been concluded in 1999 when it was first commenced but for the series of diverse applications filed by his lawyer which dragged the case as far as the Supreme Court before it was returned to the lower court.
Absolving the Lagos State government of being responsible for the delay, Lawal claimed that a good number of the applications were filed by his lawyer to move the case to higher court, even when the witnesses were ready.
Lawal also attributed the delay to the absence of some of the prosecution witnesses, whom he said had either been transferred or dead, even as he added that lack of cooperation between the trail judge, defense and prosecution lawyers could also be responsible.
“If the three do not cooperate, there is no way a speedy trial can be done”, the solicitor-general stated in spite of the time frame of 90 days prescribed for trial of criminal cases by the state government.
It would be recalled that Major Hamza Al-Mustapha was recently discharged and acquitted on charges of conspiracy to murder Mr. Alex Ibru, the publisher of The Guardian Newspapers but is still languishing in detention.
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