IGP finally complies with court order, pays D925,000 to litigant

The litigant, Mohammed Lamin Komma has received his money through the Ministry of Finance.

Reacting to this development, Mr. Komma expressed delight at winning the case.

“The judgement is impressive and it will change the dynamics because a lot of Gambians are suffering from similar incidents. The reason of fighting for this case is not about money but basically to hold government authorities accountable for their action especially the Attorney General's Chambers and the police,” he said.

Komma, a staff of The Judiciary also accused Magistrate Sillah of trying to compromise his case.

He said: "Magistrate Sillah who took the case wanted to compromise it and that prompted me to take another lawyer because Borry Touray was my lawyer. He went to a point where we were frustrated and I took another lawyer. Magistrate Sillah nearly compromised the case in favour of State and I filed a petition against him at the Complaints and Ethics Committee of the Judiciary headed by Justice Mahoney. We advised for him to recuse himself from the case because I don’t have any trust in him because at the judgment stage, he made series of adjournments, failing to deliver the judgment on the specific dates he gave. This was in April 2021. Judgement was never delivered until 21st September 2021 when I brought in another new lawyer, Counsel Malick H.B Jallow.”

He revealed that when the judgement was delivered, the State never filed an appeal and was reluctant to comply with court order.

“So I took the matter to the Select Committee on Human Rights of the National Assembly and they summoned the IGP to appear. It was from there he wrote to Interior Ministry to facilitate the payment of the judgement sum. We wrote a petition against the IGP and copied to the Secretary General at the Office of the President, Clerk of the National Assembly, the Attorney General and the Ministry of Interior, telling them that the IGP failed to comply with the advice from the Attorney General’s Chambers which he failed to do and this was why we petitioned him. However, on 29th June, the Interior Ministry wrote to the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Finance to facilitate the payment of the court order,” he posited.

It would be recalled that the plaintiff Mohammed Lamin Komma, sometime in 2016, had a problem with his landlady Neneh Baldeh and Yaya Bah, which was reported to the police. One day, the police came to his house with the above mentioned people, they took away all his belongings. The complainant then pursued the police for his items to be returned but it was never done. He decided to file a civil suit against the police to either recover his items or be compensated. The civil case was then dragged to court and judgment was delivered following several proceedings.

A judgement delivered by Magistrate Sillah of the Banjul Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, 14th September 2021, indicated that after going through the case, the plaintiff Mohammed Lamin Komma is entitled to all the claims in his Praecipe as follows;

(i) Recovery of the sum of D775,000. 00 being damages of items missing from the plaintiff by the 1st and 2nd defendants,

(ii) D100, 000.00 as legal and administrative fees,

(iii) Cost of D50,000. 00.