The prosecution team yesterday, Monday, April 11, 2022, at the Temple of Justice suffered serious setbacks when the Monrovia City Court ruled against its request to compel Political leader and Standard Bearer of the Alternative National Congress Mr. Alexander B. 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.
Ruling on their request, Magistrate Jomah Jallah of the Monrovia City Court said state prosecutors’ request for Mr. Cummings’ passport was beyond the court’s jurisdiction and the request for Whatsapp text messages from its service providers is also outside the bailiwick of the court.
The ongoing trial which involves Mr. Cummings and two other leaders of the ANC, Senator Daniel Naathen and Attorney Aloysius Toe, National Chairman and Secretary General respectively, have been accused by Mr. Benoni Urey of the All Liberia Party(ALP) of forgery and criminal conspiracy in the alleged alteration of the CPP framework document..
The ANC officials have vehemently rejected and denied the charges as bogus and politically motivated, terming them 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 Saymah Syrenius Cephus have again made two requests for the court to extract the four pages of WhatsApp text messages they produced and included upon demand by ANC defense lawyers. State Prosecutors had 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.
The 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 them as evidence in the trial. They said the four pages of extracted text messages discovered and later ordered to be included as exhibits are crucial to vindicating the ANC Political Leader and others of the charges levied against them.
The defense lawyers rejected the request for postponement of the trial for the third time, twice for their unavailability and third due to the reported illness of state witness Theodore Momo. Ruling was reserved by the court in all instances.
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