Justice Emeka Nwite of the Federal High Court, Abuja, has admitted additional confessional statements and a Digital Forensic Examination Report against five defendants standing trial for their alleged involvement in the June 5, 2022 terror attack on St. Francis Catholic Church, Owo, Ondo State, in which 41 people were killed and 140 others injured.
Justice Nwite also admitted a Tecno mobile phone said to have revealed exchanges of communication among the defendants before and after the attack.
The court admitted the exhibits following the absence of objections from counsel to the five defendants, Abdullahi Mohammed.
At the proceedings, the Department of State Services (DSS), which is prosecuting the accused persons, formally closed its case after calling 11 witnesses to testify in support of the charges.
Following this development, Justice Nwite adjourned the matter to March 4 and 5 for the defendants to open their defence.
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Earlier, counsel to the defendants informed the court that they would testify in their own defence and that he could conclude the case within one day. He, however, urged the court to direct the DSS to grant him access to the defendants in its custody to avoid any obstacles in preparing their defence.
At the hearing, the DSS’s last witness, code-named PSSK, a senior operative in charge of forensic and counter-terrorism, narrated how he and his team were deployed to Owo to trace, locate and apprehend the perpetrators of the attack.
He told the court that geospatial network filtering technology was deployed, filtering thousands of mobile phone lines that had contact within Egbeka and Ifon.
According to the witness, the process narrowed the investigation to the phone of the fifth defendant, Idris Abdulmalik Omeiza, leading to his arrest in Ifon, Ondo State.
He further stated that Omeiza’s confession led to the arrest of the four other defendants. Forensic examinations, he added, revealed that they were in a series of communications with one another before and after the attack.
The witness also told the court that three of the defendants made several calls before and after the incident, indicating they knew one another, and maintained that their arrest was the result of technological investigation, not by accident.
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