The woman, Amie Sowe, told the court that the accused took her to a shanty-like house on a plot of land in the bush to live there with her children, where the incident occurred.
The accused, Yugo Sowe, has been charged with five counts of attempted murder, assault causing grievous bodily harm, intentional harm, wounding, and domestic violence.
The witness, Amie Sowe, explained to the court that she had difficulties during her marriage with the accused (her husband), which all started when she travelled to her village and the accused sold off her land and cow.
After her return from the village, the witness said she asked her ex-husband why he sold the land and the husband responded that the land was a gift to her by a man who wanted to marry her.
The witness said that was not the case because the person who gave her the land was her uncle. She said she complained to her mother about it but the mother told her to bear and forget about it because they were related. “I took my mother’s advice,” she said.
The witness further narrated that she went back to the village and the husband sold her cow and then pronounced divorce to her, adding that after her return from the village, she asked the husband why he sold her cow.
She said she also told her mother about it and the mother confronted and told the husband about all the losses he had caused the wife, that he could have been the one to protect her from those predicaments. The witness added that the husband then told her mother that he was going to pay back for the cow, although he decided to sell the cow because he did not want it to die.
She said the husband then pronounced a divorce between them again, which made it the second time he had done so, and since then she said she had not got peace and that even after the third pronouncement of divorce, the problems continued. The husband, she narrated, told her he was just angry but he was still her husband.
The witness said she told the ex-husband that he had divorced her three times, so she was no longer his wife. She further explained that when she was living in the property in the bush with her children, the husband used to go there with the intention of sleeping with her.
She said he reminded him that they were no longer married and such things should not happen but the ex-husband told her that as long as she lived in the house he would go there and sleep with her. The only way he would stop that was for her to leave the house, the witness said, but she told the ex-husband that she would not leave her children behind.
The ex-husband, she went on, continued to go to the house at night or anytime he would, and that continued for three years.
When the accused eventually stopped going to the house, the witness said, during the third year, he would go to the property and identify certain portions of the land for the second wife.
That land or plot apportioning, she said, also became a problem because the accused told her that if she (the witness) did not stop telling him that the second wife “does not have any share in the house” he would kill her.
“I told him then ‘you will have to kill me but Dabo has no share in this property’,” the witness stated, adding that the accused then told her he was going to sell the property.
She said the accused further brought three customers at different occasions to negotiate for the property among them was one Ebrima Bah who was a chairman and now an Alkalo in Jalambang.
She said when she told Ebrima the alkalo about the issue she had with the ex-husband, Ebrima then told her that he would not go to the property again.
“Yugo then told me that he was going to sell the land or kill me,” the witness said.
The case was adjourned until 3 June 2024.
