BY IKECHUKWU NNOCHIRI

ABUJA – A Federal High Court sitting in Abuja, yesterday, remanded one of the police officers who allegedly shot leader of Boko Haram, Mallam Mohammed Yusuf, in cold blood in 2009, in prison custody.

Justice Donatus Okorowo said the accused, Sergeant Adamu Gado, should remain in Kuje prison, pending the hearing and determination of a bail application he filed before the High Court yesterday.

The order was made on a day four other indicted police officers, CSP J. B Abang, ACP Akeera, CSP Mohammed Ahmadu and ACP Mada Buba, took turns to plead not guilty to an amended two-count criminal charge preferred against them by the Federal Government .

Though the trial judge remanded Gado in prison, he, however, allowed the four other accused persons to go home on bail. The trial judge said that they should be closely monitored by all the relevant security agencies to ensure their availability for trial.

Meanwhile, spirited efforts by newsmen to ascertain the said bail conditions proved abortive, as both counsel in the matter and the court clerk, blatantly refused to divulge the terms which they claimed were handed to the four accused persons on April 23.

However, a source who spoke to Vanguard on grounds of anonymity, said the court had ordered the accused persons to surrender all their travelling documents to the court registry and produce two sureties each, who it said must not only be resident within the jurisdiction of the high court, but should also sign an undertaking that they would not abscond from trial.

He said the sureties were equally ordered to tender their recent passport photographs, title deeds of their landed properties and depose to an affidavit.

Though the source hinted that they were also mandated to deposit money as bond before the court, he was however unable to recollect the exact amount.

The two-count amended charge that was read by the court clerk in the open court yesterday, bothered on alleged acts of terrorism, conspiracy and murder.

The charge which was filed at the behest of the Federal Government, specifically alleged that the five policemen, unlawfully executed the apprehended leader of the Boko Haram, Yusuf, and some of his followers in cold blood, stressing that their action amounted to an offence under section 315 of the Criminal Code.

They were further accused of conspiring with one another to commit an offence to wit; a terrorist act and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 516 of the Criminal Code and punishable under Section 15 (1) (2) of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission Act, 2004.

It would be recalled that Yusuf, his father-in-law Baa Fugu and an alleged financier of the group, Buji Foi, were on July 30, 2009, allegedly murdered inside a police station in Maiduguri, shortly after they were captured alive and handed over to the police command by team of military personnel drafted to the state to quell crisis that bedeviled the town two years ago.

Though the police authority initially attempted to justify their death on grounds that they engaged its officers on duty in a shoot-out, however, video clips that subsequently emerged, indicated that jungle justice was meted against them.