Al-Mustapha sentenced to death

Written by Daily Trust Tuesday, 31 January 2012

Major Hamza Al-Mustapha’s long drawn murder trial ended yesterday when a Lagos High Court sentenced him to death by hanging for the 1996 murder of Kudirat Abiola, wife of the late presidential candidate Moshood Abiola.

Judge Mojisola Dada of the High Court ruled that Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, chief security officer to the late Head of State General Sani Abacha, was guilty of conspiracy and murder of Kudirat.

An aide to Abiola, Lateef Sofolahan, was found guilty of the same charges and also sentenced to death by hanging after the trial which had been repeatedly delayed since 1999.

Kudirat was shot dead on June 4, 1996 in Lagos.

“The court is of the view that the prosecution evidence is manifestly reliable as having proved ingredients of conspiracy and murder against the accused for the murder of Alhaja Kudirat Abiola on June 4, 1996,” Justice Dada said in her ruling which lasted about eight hours.

“The defendants are hereby sentenced to mandatory sentence according to Section 319 of Criminal Code of Laws of Lagos State. They are to die by hanging until pronounced death,” she added.

Defence lawyer for Al-Mustapha, Mr. Olalekan Ojo, rejected the court judgement, saying he would appeal against it.

Speaking to the BBC Hausa shortly after his sentencing, Al-Mustapha said the judgement was hypocritical and was not based on the evidence before the court. He insisted that some unnamed powerful people were behind his travails.

Al-Mustapha is not going to be hanged immediately, lawyers said, pending the outcome of his appeal which could take a couple of years.

If the Court of Appeal confirms his sentencing, he is likely to appeal again to the Supreme Court.

Death penalty has not been officially carried out in the country in some 15 years, with earlier executions having prompted harsh criticism from rights groups.

State governors who have powers to endorse death warrants have not been keen at sending condemned prisoners to the gallows, experts say, leading to a swelling number of death-row inmates in the country’s prisons.

Al-Mustapha was the powerful chief security officer to Abacha, who ruled from November 1993 to July 1998 when he died.

Abiola, the presumed winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, was jailed in 1994 after he challenged the military’s decision to annul the vote, which he claimed to have won. He died in jail a month after Abacha’s death in hazy circumstances.

Abacha had allegedly set up a so-called “strike force” which hunted down opponents of his regime, a number of whom were either shot dead or jailed, while some fled the country.

Delivering the judgement, Justice Dada faulted Al-Mustapha’s allegations that he was being persecuted over his possession of some video evidence, saying it was a mere subtle attempt to wriggle out of the case.

She also faulted his claims that some witnesses were induced to implicate him for the murder.

She also criticised him for defending the late Abacha at the expense of lives of Nigerians.

“He felt obliged to silence every voice against the voice of his boss. He magnified himself in such a way that nobody could touch him. The tape he sent to Obasanjo was illegally obtained by him. It was not true that he was persecuted based on the content of video document in his possession. He has been in detention of the Special Investigation Panel before Obasanjo came,” Justice Dada said.

She said Sofolahan “acted as Judas Iscariot. He was friend to the Abiola family in the open and enemy in secret. He sacrificed his master (Abiola) because of his personal greed. He was a viper.”

Al-Mustapha, Sofolohan and Rabo Lawal had filed a no-case submission at the Lagos High Court in their trial over the murder of Kudirat. On August 1, 2011, the court discharged and acquitted Lawal saying there was no prima facie case against him. But trial for the other two went on till yesterday.

The marathon trial witnessed some startling revelations by Al-Mustapha on the alleged culpability of some Yoruba leaders in the death of Abiola and how some unnamed Nigerians murdered Abacha.

Sofolahan, for his part, had said he was never an aide to Kudirat Abiola.

Al-Mustapha had been in detention for about 13 years while his twin trial over attempted murder of the late Guardian publisher Alex Ibru and over the murder of Kudirat dragged on.

In December 2010, the Lagos High Court presided by Justice Muftau Olokooba freed him from the charges of attempted murder of Ibru.

The Lagos State Government, which had been prosecuting both cases, appealed the judgement. But in October last year, the Court of Appeal threw out the state government’s objection and upheld the earlier judgement discharging Al-Mustapha.

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