The absence from court of Uladi Mussa Thursday forced the High Court in Lilongwe to adjourn the case in which the former minister of Home Affairs and the former Senior Assistant Chief Immigration Officer, David Kwanjana, are accused of aiding foreigners to unlawfully acquire passports and citizenship documents.
\nLawyers for Mussa, Paul Maulidi and Henry Kadzakumanja told the court that their client could not attend the hearing due to the death of Mufti Cassim Abbas, an influential Muslim leader and uncle to Mussa\u2019s wife.
\nMaulidi said Abbas was very close to the Mussa family and in the circumstances the court was supposed to adjourn to Friday.
\n\u201cI am fully aware that it is possible for the hearing to continue even in the absence of the accused. But considering that this is a critical witness, I pray that the case be adjourned to enable our client to attend the hearing, for the purposes of the cross-examination,\u201d Maulidi said.
\nBut High Court Judge Chifundo Kachale said he was reluctant to adjourn the case which has experienced and competent lawyers who can ably represent their clients.
\n\u201cI think you can take notes for the purposes of your client. I know issues of funerals and the need to respect the same but the case progress is important. What if that happens to another accused person considering the time we have for the case? I respect your client\u2019s situation but, looking at the time, we have to make progress,\u201d Kachale said.
\nLead s tate prosecutor Kamudoni Nyasulu agreed with the court\u2019s proposal with a suggestion of Mussa appearing in court yesterday afternoon.
\n\u201cIslamic funeral that happened Thursday cannot take the whole day,\u201d Nyasulu said.
\nHowever, there was an objection from Kadzakumanja, who said travelling from Mangochi to Lilongwe takes hours and it would not be possible for Mussa to be in court.
\nKachale then reluctantly adjourned the case to 8 o\u2019clock in the morning of Friday.
\nMussa and Kwanjana are answering two counts of negligent of official duty and using public office to the advantage of somebody.
\nSome Burundians, Rwandans and Ugandans in the case are suspected to have influenced Mussa and Kwanjana to unlawfully approve the Malawian citizenship applications for 50 foreigners.
\nMussa recently, joined the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, a move many saw as way of seeking protection from the law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The absence from court of Uladi Mussa Thursday forced the High Court in Lilongwe to adjourn the case in which the former minister of Home Affairs and the former Senior Assistant Chief Immigration Officer, David Kwanjana, are accused of aiding foreigners to unlawfully acquire passports and citizenship documents. Lawyers for Mussa, Paul Maulidi and Henry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16944,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58957"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58958,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58957\/revisions\/58958"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}