Africa-Press – Liberia. The ongoing US$100 million cocaine case at Criminal Court “C” experienced yet another setback after two language translators contracted by the government were rejected by two of the defendants who had earlier demanded the services of translators.
Larsana Keita and Tito Abanobi were designated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and presented to the court to serve as translators to defendants Malam Conte, a Guinea Bissau national and Arabic speaker, and Makki Admeh Issam, a Portuguese, respectively.
Keita and Abanobi were contracted by the state to interpret the testimonies of the defendants in the case.
A brief procedural hearing on Friday, which was expected to end the screening of a 15-member jury panel for the start of the trial, was postponed to March 9, because of the two defendant’s objection to the interpreters.
The defendants asked Judge Blamo Dixon to change the interpreters because they were uncomfortable having them.
Though the accused did not provide in-depth details for their rejection of the government-appointed interpreters, a highly placed judicial source confided in the Daily Observer that the rejection was based on the interpreter’s inability to fluently speak in both Arabic and Portuguese.
The judge’s action followed a request from defense counsel that two of the defendants, Conte and Issam, were not fluent in the English language, and needed interpreters.
The request from the defense counsel compelled Dixon to suspend the case, subsequently writing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to provide his court with the two interpreters.
The interpreters appeared in the courtroom on March 1, after a thorough search but were promptly rejected by the defendants.
Initially, the ministry through Deputy Foreign Minister/Legal Counsel, Deweh E Gray, had informed the court about writing a diplomatic note to the US Embassy to assist with both the Arabic and Portuguese interpreters.
Without communicating with the US embassy, the ministry on February 22 wrote the court introducing Keita and Abanobi as the two interpreters, whose representation was dramatically rejected by the defendants.
The case grew from the government’s seizure of US$100 million worth of cocaine on October 1, 2022, in which one Oliver Zayzay, a Liberian national, and some of his foreign associates were arrested after seeking to purchase what appeared to be a shipping container full of fresh frozen pig feet from a refrigerated storage facility in Monrovia.
The defendants had initially offered to pay the owners of the container, AJA Group Holdings, the sum of US$200,000 for the entire container, which, at the time, cost less than US$30,000.
But when the defendants, within less than eight hours, doubled their offer to US$400,000 and, finally, to US$1 million, AJA Group said they were certain that Zayzay and his associates were dealing with a serious case of narcotics trafficking.
The company said they contacted the United States Ambassador, a move that brought both the American and Liberian anti-narcotics law enforcement agents into the picture and caught the suspects red-handed.
The US$100 million cocaine bust is believed to be the biggest arrest in terms of street value on the African continent so far.
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