Posted on 02/23/2009 12:19:31 PM PST by nickcarraway
The High Court yesterday adjourned the murder case facing 10 police officers as one of them was said to be too ill to testify.
In the case, the ten officers, who include a former Dar es Salaam Regional Crime Officer, Abdallah Zombe, are charged with killing four innocent civilians at a forest in Dar es Salaam in 2006.
Seven suspects have so far taken to the dock to defend themselves and yesterday was Rashid Lema's turn.
Constable Lema was however unable to appear before the court due to ill health and his counsel Mr Dennis Msafiri successfully asked the court to adjourn the case.
Lema has provided information, which the prosecution says is vital in establishing guiltiness against the accused.
He went into hiding immediately after learning of an impending arrest against him and co-accused.
Before disappearing, he had given a statement to teams of investigators exonerating the suspected murderers.
But he later emerged telling the investigators that he was ready to tell the truth and went on to withdraw the exonerating statement against his colleagues, saying he had told lies..
He confessed to the investigators and justice of the peace that the three gemstone dealers and a taxi driver were arrested without any resistance but were later executed in cold blood at Pande Forest in his presence According to PC Lema's stament, the investigators were taken to Pande Forest where the four were allegedly executed.
At the forest, the team recovered two used cartridges and blood sample which were later confirmed to be of a human being.
In the statement, Lema told the team that on arrival at the forest the four men were made to lie on their stomachs before they were shot dead one by one.
Lema implicated the second accused person in his statement when he said that as pressure from the public mounted on government to investigate the incident, Bageni ordered him to go to Bunju sand quarry next day to fire and bring him spent cartridges after expending bullets from the firearm.
Lema further confessed that he did not hold a gun during the killings and identified one Saad Alawi as a person who actually shot the deceased.
Alawi is still at large. He is among two officers who went into hiding after President Jakaya Kikwete formed a commission to investigate the killings.
It is Lema who confessed in the statement that there was frequent radio calls and phone communications between Zombe and Bageni throughout the operation from the time of arrest to the murder of the four at Pande forest.
Another accused who made similar confession over the killings is Bakari. He didn�t raise any objection when his confession statement was about to be tendered in court as an exhibit.
When the hearing continued in September last year, other defence lawyers strongly objected to the tendering of Lema�s and Rajabu�s confessions in court as exhibits on ground that the statements implicated other accused persons.
Rajabu who had also gone into hiding after the killings, emerged only to present himself before a team of investigators, telling the team that the four were shot dead in execution-style by the police officers at Pande forest as he looked on.
Like Lema, Rajabu also states in his statement that what he recorded before a presidential commission of inquiry and the first police team was not the truth, and that he was forced to give false testimony by Mr Zombe and Bageni.
He too did not challenge the tendering of the confession statement in court last September.
Asked if he wished to make a statement, Mr. Zombe replied "BRAAAAAAAINSSSS!"
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