How ThisDay office was bombed – Star Witness

A Federal High Court sitting in Abuja yesterday heard the graphic account of how a self-confessed member of Boko Haram, Mr. Mustapha Umar, bombed the offices of ThisDay, The Sun and The Moment newspapers in Kaduna on April 26, 2012. The blast killed three innocent people instantly and injured others. Some people also died later.

The testimony by four prosecution witnesses, who were all masked, came moments after the trial judge, Justice Adeniyi Ademola, threw out an application by the suspected bomber to oppose the plans by the prosecution to subject him to a secret trial. All the four witnesses, who took turn to mount the witness box, looked like masqueraders. The accused, who stared occasionally at the witnesses, laughed all through over their appearance.

The witnesses gave their account for over three hours. Three other witnesses are expected to give further evidence against Umar today. But the defence team, which was apparently not satisfied with the ruling of the judge on the public trial for the accused, may proceed to the Abuja division of the Court of Appeal this morning.

The lead defence counsel, Mr. Nureni Sulymon, said yesterday that he had never witnessed the kind of trial his client was subjected to. He wanted the witnesses to remove their masks, identify themselves by names, occupation, residential addresses, office addresses and history of their career which the prosecution said was not possible.

Although Sulymon allowed the prosecution witnesses to give evidence in the matter notwithstanding his opposition to the procedure of the trial, he vowed to test the ruling of the court at the appellate court.

The notice of appeal, if lodged, may stall Umar’s trial. Only counsel to both parties, court support staff, journalists and Law School students on externship programme were allowed to witness the proceedings yesterday.

First to mount the witness box was the star prosecution witness who was simply identified as XYZ of Oxford Street. In his evidence-in-chief, he narrated how Umar allegedly bombed the offices of the three newspapers thus: “On 26 April, 2012, at about 10am, I was passing along Kotangora Road in Kaduna when I saw people gathered around SOJ Plaza. “In the plaza, they sell flowers at the basement of the building.

On the upper floor are the offices of This- Day, The Sun and The Moment. I moved closer to find out what was happening. On getting closer, I saw one Honda car very close to the wall of the building. I saw about two people trying to rescue the accused from the vehicle.

He was sitting in the driver’s seat. I joined in attempting to rescue him because I thought it was a car accident. “But as much as we tried to bring him out, we failed. This is because the doors to the vehicle were locked from inside and we could not open them. But we eventually forced the doors open to rescue him. “Immediately we brought him out, to our amazement, he started shouting that he brought bomb to the premises and that it could explode any moment. He was speaking in Hausa language ‘bomb Che, bomb Che, wallahi’.