By Moses Sesay
The Government of Sierra Leone continue to use the 2022 August 10 violent protest in Freetown and some other parts of the country to clamp down on top opposition supporters, as they have been continuously publishing list of wanted people.
The recent wanted list that was published by the Sierra Leone Police has been frowned at by Civil Society Organisations and Human Rights Activists. Some of the people that have been declared wanted by the police have been challenged by many.
Key amongst the wanted names recently published by the police is 32 years old Haja Bintu Daboh, wife of a popular opposition youth activist, Mohamed Foday Daboh, formerly of Upper Looking Town in Kissy, east end of Freetown, who was brutally killed in the street by government security men in military uniform for his alleged involvement in championing the protest.
According to reports gathered by this newspaper, Haja Bintu Daboh was a very intelligent, hardworking philanthropist and prosperous businesswoman, that cannot be associated with violence.
Reports say Haja Bintu Daboh has only been included in the wanted list because of her late husband’s strong affiliation with the main opposition All People’s Congress (APC) Party, which has been accused of funding the protest.
The August 10 protest led by faceless people, spontaneously broke out and there was violence and chaos in the capital city Freetown and some parts of the country.
Some people lost their lives, including six serving police officers that were on duty. Properties worth millions of leones were destroyed and there was a standstill in Freetown and other affected areas which resulted in the declaration of curfew and deployment of Military Aid to Civil Power (MAC-P).
Immediately after the incident, the government set up a special committee to look into the violence and bring all perpetrators to book.
Although most people have registered their dissatisfaction over the inclusion of Haja Bintu Daboh’s name on the wanted list, few people also believed that her late husband was one of the leaders of the August 10 protest in the country.
Based on the evidence gathered during this medium’s investigations, it was clearer that Haja Bintu Daboh is innocent and is a victim of political witch-hunt.
Since she got missing in August 2022, her house and that of her family members have been continuously raided by military personnel and police officers from the Operations and Supports Division (OSD), in search of her, instilling fear and panic in her family members and also threating her safety and that of her family members.
It can be recalled that the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs was alleged to have been behind the house to house raiding of key opposition figures in the name of arresting the August 10 protesters.
Some family members are of the fear that Haja Bintu Daboh might have been arrested and killed or locked up in some secret detention center, suffering. In any case, this medium has been able to note that she has been one of the lucky few to be enjoying her life after several of her friends and relatives have brutally lost their lives senselessly in the hands of bad political witch-hunt.
Police say their investigations have proved that Haja Bintu Daboh’s husband, Mohamed Foday Daboh, was one of the senior executive members of the ‘People’s Power in Politics’ (PPP), the main opposition group that funded and championed the August 10 protest in Freetown.
The police say they have gotten intelligence that the fugitive, Haja Bintu Daboh is in possession of vital documents or information in relation to the protest and its secret funder, left with her by her late husband, that will be of help to the police in their investigations.
Therefore, the search for her intensifies daily and fear are that if caught, she will tortured to death in an attempt to force information from her about her husband’s and other secret funders’ involvement in the protest.
The PPP group and all its members and associates have been listed in government’s most wanted list since the August 10 incident.
