The Federal High Court Abuja yesterday admitted the statements of alleged coup plotters as exhibits in the trial-within-trial in the ongoing prosecution of six people accused of plotting to overthrow President Bola Tinubu.
At the resumed trial, the court called on the first witness to defend the voluntariness of extrajudicial statements made by the defendants. The trial-within-trial is aimed at determining whether statements allegedly made by the defendants to military investigators were obtained voluntarily or under duress, coercion, torture, or inducement as alleged by the defence.
Justice Joyce Abdulmalik cautioned parties to restrict themselves strictly to issues relating to voluntariness of the statements and avoid delving into substantive matters already pending in the main trial. The prosecution led by the Director of Public Prosecution of the Federation (DPPF), Rotimi Oyedepo (SAN), called its first witness, a military officer, who is the 4th prosecution witness in the main trial.
The witness said the defendants were calm, unagitated, and fully aware of their constitutional rights before making their statements. The prosecution thereafter tendered the statements of the six defendants allegedly obtained by the Special Investigative Panel, SIP and the Military Police, which the court admitted as exhibits.
The prosecution also tendered a black external hard drive and a flash drive said to contain video recordings of the defendants’ extrajudicial statements alongside certificates of identification. Defence lawyers raised no objections to their admissibility during the trial-within-trial and the court admitted the devices as exhibits.
The witness insisted that no defendant was denied access to legal representation and that all suspects were informed of their rights, including the right to remain silent and the right to engage counsel of their choice. On the 1st defendant, a retired General, the witness described him as a highly respected senior military officer who remained calm throughout the interrogation process.
The witness further told the court that the video recordings showed no sign of coercion, intimidation or inducement and that the similarity between the oral and written statements reinforced the claim that they were voluntarily made. On allegations that the written statements did not correspond exactly with the recorded video interviews, the witness said written accounts could not be word-for-word reproductions of oral interviews because “human beings are not computers”.
The witness gave similar testimony regarding the 2nd defendant, identified as Captain Erasmus, stating that he voluntarily elected to reduce his oral statement into writing after speaking in the recorded interview. He denied the claims that the defendant was coerced into pleading for clemency, insisting his statements were made freely.
On the 3rd defendant, a Police Inspector, the witness dismissed the claims of torture and coercion. On the 4th defendant, identified as Umoru Zekeri, the witness expressed surprise over allegations of involuntariness and maintained that the defendant freely narrated events and locations allegedly known only to him.
