The Federal Government on Wednesday said
the co-owner of Amigo Supermarket, Mustapha Fawaz, and two other
Lebanese, facing terrorism charges, spied on Israelis and other foreign
nationals in Abuja.
The suspects, the Federal Government also said, placed some strategic buildings in Abuja under surveillance.
Federal Government prosecutor, Simon
Egede, stated this after tendering a video of interview sessions in
which the suspects made statements to the State Security Service.
Fawaz and his co-accused- Abdallah
Thanini and Talal Roda- are facing 16 counts of terrorism, following
their arrest in connection with an armoury in Bompai, Kano.
Egede said the suspects also took their unnamed foreign collaborators around Abuja in search of the Israeli Embassy.
He added that the suspects and their
collaborators used the Sheraton Hotels and Towers building to capture
various strategic buildings in the Federal Capital Territory in an
unauthorised surveillance operation.
Video compact discs, containing
recordings of the interviews, were admitted in evidence by the court
presided over by Justice Adeniyi Ademola.
A prosecution witness, an SSS technician, played short excerpts of the videos in the courtroom.
Egede, who spoke to journalists after the court session, said the videos confirmed the charges against the Lebanese.
He said, “Our last witness brought a video of all the interview sessions.
“These have been tendered in evidence
and it corroborates the confessions made by the accused persons and the
testimonies of all the other witnesses.
“The videos confirmed the unauthorised
and illegal surveillance carried out by the first accused person (Fawaz)
along with his foreign collaborators, where they captured different
strategic buildings in Abuja, while perching on top of the Sheraton
building.
Earlier, counsel for the suspects, Robert Clarke (SAN), said the videos did not disclose any fresh facts against his clients.
His clients, he said, had already admitted that they received military training from Hezbollah.
He however added that the training the
suspects received in 1991 was in line with the Lebanese policy, which
mandated their young men to undergo military schooling.
Cross-examining the last prosecution
witness, Clarke alleged that some “white people” also interrogated the
suspects, an exercise he claimed the SSS did not record.
However, the SSS technician refuted the allegation.
The technician said, “I am not aware of any interrogation, I am only aware of the interview.
“Our agency is standardised, every
interview must be recorded. To do otherwise would amount to an
illegality which the agency does not condone.”
Justice Ademola adjourned the matter to August 2, 2013, for the suspects to commence their defence.
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