The Secretary General of the Sierra Leone DJs Union, Prezo Koroma and others have been released from detention. Koroma, Don Creek, Rahim Senior Cole and others have been serving a 36-month prison sentence after they have been arrested and arraigned in courtroom earlier than Magistrate Mark Ngegba over disorderly conduct and disorderly behaviour on the OSD headquarters in Freetown.
Reports have been that the group of 12 had gone to go to well-known Sierra Leonean rapper, Alhaji Amadu Bah aka LAJ, who was detained a number of days earlier and was being investigated for a felony offence. Most of them, whereas in detention had their hair shaved, together with LAJ’s who had lengthy dreadlocks.
The Sierra Leone Police in a press launch mentioned that that they had executed so in accordance with a “Standard Operating Procedure” on the holding facility. The then Police Inspector General, Ambrose Sovula, instructed the BBC that the rapper wished to make use of his hair to strangle himself, so it needed to be reduce off.
Popular Lawyer Alfred Kamanda, following up on LAJ’s case on the request of the rapper’s dad, reported that there have been a number of inhumane remedies to all of the detainees, together with beating, pepper spraying and different abuses.
Several rights teams, together with the Sierra Leone Bar Association, condemned the acts and urged the Sierra Leone Police to stay to human rights conventions of their remedy of suspects of their custody.
LAJ and his brother, Ishmail Bah, nonetheless stay in incarceration. The rapper has additionally not been sentenced both. Since he was arrested in June 2022, he has appeared in courtroom severally, and his case is now on the excessive courtroom after it was committed for trial by Magistrate Mark Ngegba. There have been a few experiences by way of the rapper’s Facebook web page that his case continues to be adjourned as witnesses don’t present up in courtroom. The most up-to-date was on February sixth.
The rapper would seem in courtroom on March 3, 2023, and appears just about hopeful that he can be released.
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