Essa Faal got exasperated at today’s witness after the witness said the lawyer might have been an NIA officer to know he knew the officers he encountered at the NIA at the agency premises.
Babou Loum appeared before the TRRC today to testify on the independent witness role he played in the March 2006 coup.
“Mr witness you got to know these people at the NIA,” Essa Faal put to the witness in respect of investigators he met at the NIA.
“I knew them at the Major Crime Unit, ask them,” Loum answered.
“You knew these people at the NIA,” Essa Faal insisted.
The lawyer then got angry when the witness told him: “Maybe you were an NIA, in plain cloth and knew that I knew them there.”
“Mr witness cut that nonsense, cut that nonsense. We’re not here playing games. You cannot be telling me these things, okay. Answer the questions and answer them respectfully. You’re being treated with respect, treat other people with respect. You cannot treat me like this, you cannot tell me these kinds of things. Let’s dot this properly,” Essa Faal told the witness.
The witness then reacted: “I gave him (Essa) respect but what he wants to force me [into accepting]… I am telling him where I knew those people but he’s forcing me to say that I knew them there [NIA]. I did’t know them there.”
