A portrait of the Former President of Sierra Leone – Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma was today, Tuesday June 30th 2020, tendered in evidence at the Freetown Magistrate Court No. 1 by the State in support of its libel allegations against one of the country’s former cabinet minister and aspirant for the presidency, Dr. Sylvia Olayinka Blyden.

Former Attorney General and Minister of Justice Hon. Charles Francis Margai who is representing Dr. Blyden did not cross-examine the Exhibit Clerk but he objected to the tendering of the portrait and the other items on several grounds.

The first Prosecution witness, under the skillful cross-examination of the former Attorney-General Charles Margai, confessed that although the search warrants only authorized the Police to take away items believed to contain subversive materials, at the time they took the laptops and mobile phones, the police had no evidence of anything subversive in them.

The witness has already confessed to the court that even though Dr. Blyden requested that she should be present when they are examining her laptops and the phones, the Police deliberately chose to open the laptops and phones and tamper with them in the absence of Dr. Sylvia Blyden.

And it is with respect to this libel case that the portrait of the former president Ernest Bai Koroma, allegedly found hanging on a wall in Sylvia Blyden’s house by the Police, was today tendered as one of the offensive evidence presented by the prosecution to prove their case against Dr. Sylvia Olayinka Blyden.