Activist Omoyele Sowore and his co-accused, Adebayo Bakare are protesting the Department of State Service’s move to transfer them from its detention facility to prison, proclaiming the decision is frivolous, vexatious and contemptuous.
The duo were picked up by the intelligence service in early August for planning a RevolutionNow campaign, a series of nationwide protest against poor governance in the country.
They have continued to be detained by the DSS despite two separate orders by the court for them to be released.
The federal government had charged Sowore with treasonable felony, “insulting” President Muhammadu Buhari and money laundering.
On Tuesday, Femi Falana, Sowore’s lawyer, said the fresh application filed by Hassan Liman, DSS counsel, before Ijeoma Ojukwu, the judge presiding over Sowore’s trial at the federal high court, Abuja, was intended to frustrate the court’s order for the release of his client.
Falana argued that the application for their transfer from the DSS custody to prison, showed that there was no genuine intention to prosecute them.
“The application was filed by the complainant/applicant to frustrate the execution of the order of release of the 1st and 2nd defendants/objectors from the custody of the State Security Service made by this honourable court on November 6, 2019,” he said in a preliminary objection filed on behalf of the defendants.
“There is no genuine intention to prosecute the 1st and 2nd defendants by the complainant/applicant as the statement of witnesses this honourable court ordered to be availed the defence team is yet to be issued and served.
“The grounds upon which the complainant’s/applicant’s application is hinged are frivolous, vexatious, contemptuous, manifestly unarguable and unknown to law.”
The court had earlier issued a warning to Yusuf Bichi, director-general of DSS, that he could be sent to prison over the refusal of the agency to comply with the order to release Sowore.
The DSS detention facility is believed to be way better compared to the prison they are being moved to. The intelligence service once said Sowore and Bakare had opted to stay in the detention facility instead of prison because it is well equiped.
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