Thread by @ChidiOdinkalu

Yesterday, Sierra Leone's Supreme Court summarily convicted lawyer & blogger, @Soe_Marrah, for criticising a decision of the court in a #socialmedia post. The circumstances of this case are so outrageous, it is necessary to tell the story

#StandWithAugustineMarrah

Following @Soe_Marrah's post, the Supreme Court extraordinarily issued a #benchwarrant suspending his rights of practice before courts in Sierra Leone & suspending the arrest of lawyers in court premises. They declared him #WantedDeadOrAlive

The irony is that this order was issued on the same day that Sierra Leone's @PresidentBio abolished the crime of criminal defamation in Sierra Leone.

The only people who failed to notice were the Justices of Sierra Leone's Supreme Court.

Yesterday, the Court sat as a panel of 5 Justices & required @Soe_Marrah to violate his constitutional entitlement against self-incrimination. Despite the best efforts of the legal team led by @WilliamsYada_H, the Court insisted on trampling the rules.

nation.africa/kenya/news/afr…

The Court thereafter convicted @soe_marrah on nebulous charge of contempt & sentenced him to an apology & retraction to be published at his expense in 3 national dailies. They also referred @soe_marrah to the General Council of the Bar for professional discipline

While all this happened, the Sierra Leone Bar Association, #slba, lost its nerves & in the most supine fashion threw one of its most courageous members & former executive, @soe_marrah, under the bus.

There are many things wrong with what the Supreme Court of Sierra Leone did to @soe_marrah. 1st, even assuming there was contempt here, it was not in the face of the court. The correct process is for a complaint to be lodged with the Attorney-General who will initiate charges.

2nd, given that contempt outside the face of the court is a matter for the Attorney-General, the Supreme Court, as an appellate instance, lacks 1st instance or summary jurisdiction over it. The place to prosecute it is the High Court not the Supreme Court.

3rd, the judges were out of line when they insisted on requiring @soe_marrah to violate his constitutional entitlement against self-incrimination.

#StandWithAugustineMarrah

4th, having sentenced him to punishment, the judges exposed their dispositions to the flaw of the Prohibition against #doublejeopardy by insisting on requiring the General Bar Council to discipline @Soe_Marrah, when they cld easily have just done that alone to begin with.

5th, in all this, the Supreme Court of Sierra Leone refused to consider the idea that they had embarked on a malevolent dismantling of the constitutional protections of #FreeExpression in Sierra Leone. In this enterprise, they were enabled by the #SLBA.

These are such basic precepts & propositions of law & process, undergraduates in law know them. Justices of the Supreme Court of Sierra Leone cannot be so obtuse as not to know (of) them. Evidently, therefore, they were wilful & pre-meditated in the violations they perpetrated.

@Soe_Marrah's case is part of an emerging trend of rampant judges using the cover of judicial power & appearance of legal process to foreclose accountability. Last month in Tanzania, @MagufuliJP's govt used it to disbar @fatma_karume for outspoken criticism govt in her tweets.

In India, senior lawyer,
@pbhushan1, criticised Chief Justice of India for riding a powerbike belonging to BJP politician, Raj Bhavan Nagpur. For that, Supreme Court of India charged him with contempt & convicted him.

globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/in-re-pr…

We now have an emerging trend globally where judges, in cahoots with politicians are deploying judicial powers with malevolence in order to frustrate judicial accountability, violate #digitalexpression & preclude criticism of judicial wrongdoing

#StandWithAugustineMarrah

The case of @Soe_Marrah is an undisguised abuse of judicial power. A supine & cowardly #SLBA enabled it. They abdicated woefully. We now need a cross-border collaboration of Africa's legal profession to collaborate in fighting this trend. This abuse has to stop!

For those interested in what @MagufuliJP & his govt in Tanzania did, using appearance of legal process to suppress digital criticism from leading lawyer, @fatma_karume, it's all summarised here by @ICJ_org.

icj.org/tanzania-icj-c…

Apart from having a desperate sense of law & justice, Sierra Leone's Supreme Court also has a desperate sense of timing: they held their kangaroo proceedings on @Soe_Marrah & convicted him on on a dud case of contempt on the 11th anniversary of his admission to Sierra Leone Bar

1 more thing: #MiattaSamba, the judge from Sierra Leone who has bn nominated for election to the bench of @IntlCrimCourt, was part of this wilful travesty against @Soe_Marrah & #FreeExpression by the Supreme Court of Sierra Leone yesterday. We need to raise our voices....

https://twitter.com/SherryKyama/status/1322458952064552961