Justice Adeniyi Ademola, who is hearing the two cases, reserved judgment after counsel for parties in the suits adopted their final written addresses.
In the two cases, Federal Government prosecutors asked the court to convict and sentence the accused persons, but the defence counsel urged the court to dismiss the charges, insisting that there was no valid case against their clients.
Following the discovery of the armoury in Kano, the Federal Government had arrested, and dragged the co-owner of Amigo Supermarket, Mustapha Fawaz, and two other Lebanese – Abdallah Thanini and Talal Ahmed Roda – before the Abuja FHC over a 16-count charge bordering on terrorism and illegal importation of arms.
A major aspect of the Federal Government’s case against the Lebanese is the allegation that they are terrorists who belong to the Hezbollah military wing, which the prosecution described as an international terrorist organisation.
However, in their final address in defence of the Lebanese, defence lawyers, Robert Clarke, SAN, and Ahmed Raji, SAN, insisted that Hezbollah had not been designated as a terrorist organisation under Nigerian laws, and as a result, the court could not convict the suspects of terrorism.
The defence counsel informed the court that Hezbollah was a political party which was established to provide resistance to the occupation of South Lebanon by Israeli forces in the 90s.
The Head of Mission of the Lebanese Embassy in Nigeria attended the court session to express solidarity with the accused persons, and to also drive home their argument that Hezbollah was not a terrorist organisation.
Clarke noted that, just like the recent ban on the Boko Haram group, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria must proscribe Hezbollah before it could be termed a terrorist organisation under Nigerian laws.
“The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria must declare Hezbollah a terrorist organisation. In the absence of a gazette before this court deeming Hezbollah a terrorist organisation, Your Lordship has no power to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organisation,” Clarke told the court.
The defence counsel further argued that the prosecution’s case could not stand since it (prosecution) failed to tender the weapons, said to have been recovered from the Kano armory, before the court.
Only pictures of the weapons were tendered and admitted as evidence by the court.
Clarke urged the court to discountenance the pictures as useful evidence in the trial.
He said, “The non-presentation of the exhibits that were recovered in Kano has robbed Your Lordship of the opportunity of determining whether they were actual weapons or toys gangsters use to intimidate people.
“What have been presented before Your Lordship are mere photographs – this is a criminal trial where the law demands proof beyond reasonable doubt. Those photographs could have been downloaded from the internet.”
In the same vein, he faulted the failure of the prosecution to produce before the court, the photographer who took pictures of the weapons unearthed in the underground armory.
Clarke also argued that the court lacked the jurisdiction to hear the suit, noting that the rules of the FHC provided that trials should hold in the areas where the concerned offence took place.
Culled from Punch.
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