South Sudan’s high court on Monday has listened to testimony from a prosecution witness, a National Security Service officer, on the case of presidency official John Agou and other colleagues accused of embezzlement.
Speaking to the court today, Charles Andrew, a witness who headed a special team from the National Security Service, said that he received orders from Maj. Gen Paul Nek to search the houses of John Agou and Yel Luol.
Andrew said they found 54 different stamps, cars, iPhone 6, money, HP laptop computers, documents and other financial requests from the house of Yel Luol and Agou’s Click Technology Company.
For his part, Kiir Chol, a defense lawyer for the accused John Agou and Yel Luol, asked the prosecution witness Charles Andrew to tell the court whether they had have a letter of search warrant from a court.
The witness replied, “I as an officer in charge has to execute the order given to me by my commander… And there was no written letter from the commander… only [a verbal order] to arrest John Agou and check his premises.”
Defence lawyer Chol again asked him whether the order was written or not and who gave him the orders. Witness Andrew replied, “I just executed the order given to me by Maj Gen Paul Nek.”
He said that the National Security has the mandate to arrest anybody if needed.
The defense lawyer told the court that during the search of the houses of Yel Luol and John Agou and his company, there were four cars taken from Yel’s house in Jebel Dinka reported to have been taken by NSS officers.
The witness confirmed that it is true that some vehicles have gone missing and they were able to recovered two buses. He was asked by the defense to report these vehicles to the court but refused.
Andrew denied that his investigation team was responsible for the disappearance of these vehicles, saying it was another armed group of NSS officers.
The four hours court hearing ended after hearing from one witness and will continue with the next sitting tomorrow, Tuesday, according to high court judge.
Related:
High Court listens to investigator’s statements on accused presidency personnel (24 Feb.)