State prosecutors have suffered two serious setbacks at the Monrovia City Court with the rejection of their requests for Alexander Cummings to produce his Liberian passport with an American visa and Whatsapp text messages in the trial involving the alleged alteration of the Collaborating Political Parties (CPP) framework document.
Magistrate Jomah Jallah of the Monrovia City Court said state prosecutors’ request for the political leader of the Alternative National Congress (ANC) passport was beyond its jurisdiction and the request for Whatsapp text messages from its service providers are also outside the bailiwick of the court.
The ANC political leader, its National Chairperson, Senator Daniel Naatehn and Secretary-General Aloysius Toe, are facing trial for forgery and criminal conspiracy for alleged alteration of the CPP’s framework document.
ANC authorities have vehemently rejected and denied the charges as bogus and politically motivated, and as part of conspiracies between the All Liberian Party of Benoni Urey and the ruling Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) with ulterior motives.
Meanwhile, State Prosecutors led by the Solicitor General Cephus have again made two requests for the court to extract the four pages of WhatsApp text messages it produced and included upon demand by ANC’ defense lawyers. State Prosecutors on March 30, 2022, admitted to omitting the four pages of text messages and conversations between July 2, 2020 and July 18, 2020, from the evidence presented in court, and said the pages were inadvertently extracted.
ANC’ Defense Lawyers in countering the request said it would be irregular and a serious reversible error on the part of the Monrovia City Court to order the removal of the four pages of social media text messages following its ruling on March 30, 2022, marking it as evidence in the trial. ANC’s Defense Lawyers said the four pages of extracted text messages discovered and later ordered included are crucial to vindicating the ANC’s political leader and others of the charges of forgery and criminal conspiracy.
Regarding State Prosecutors’ request to postpone the trial for the third time, twice for their unavailability and the third due to the claimed “illness” of State witness Theodore Momo, it was vehemently objected to by ANC’s Defense Lawyers and rulings were reserved by the Court in all instances.
