By Nelson Manneh
Justice Kumba Sillah-Camara of the Banjul High Court has yesterday admitted and marked the audio interview of the NIA on the CDR and external hard drive as exhibit T1 and T2 respectively.
The CDR disk and the external hard drive contain interview of agents of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) who were interviewed at the Police Headquarters in Banjul in 2017 in relation to the demise of the late Solo Sandeng. During the proceedings Justice Kumba Sillah-Camara said that the audio is poorly recorded that no one can hear or get anything from it. Prosecution Lawyer Kombeh Gaye told the court that she earlier informed the court that some parts of the recordings are good and others are not good.
The court then played the next audio in the CDR which was much better than the initial ones but the background noises still remain.
Justice Kumba interrupted and raised another concern that there is too much background noise, adding that though she was closer to the computer than the lawyers she could not hear the audio properly.
After minutes of playing the audio justice Kumba Sillah-Camara said that the background noise is so much that no one can hear anything from the audio.
Defence lawyer E. Chume argue that they are stretching their ears but to no avail, they cannot hear or understand anything from the audio due to the background noise.
Lawyer Ibrahim Jallow and O. Suso all complained of not hearing anything or picking anything from the audio.
Prosecution lawyer, Kombeh Gaye informed the court that the purpose of playing the audio is to see its relevance to the proceedings. She submitted that the court had listened to the CDR and the external hard drive and finds at list something out of it. She urged the court to admit both the CDR and the external hard drive as exhibits.
Defence lawyer, E Chume objected, arguing that the audios are not relevant, as none of them was able to hear what the audio is all about and transcribing means extracting exact words of the audio “then how can it be transcribed when they cannot hear anything after listening to it”.
Prosecution lawyer, Kombeh Gaye argued that the objection of the defence is misconceived, pointing out that the issue at hand is whether the CDR and the external hard drive are relevant and not identifying the voices on them.
She said identifying the voices on the audio only comes after it’s admitted by the court, then the Witness will be asked to identify the voices but prior to that it cannot be identified.
At this point the court ruled that that CDR and the external drive are relevant to the case and would be admitted and marked Exhibits T1 and T2 respectively.
Hearing continues today at 1 pm.
