The dangers of Al-Mustapha’s trial
His dramatic defence has been hitting the headlines like the re-run of a sad but familiar tale. As the chief security officer to the late maximum dictator, Sani Abacha, al-Mustapha remains the closest witness of all the dark and shady events which characterised the Abacha era. Today, he is telling his own story and it […]
His dramatic defence has been hitting the headlines like the re-run of a sad but familiar tale. As the chief security officer to the late maximum dictator, Sani Abacha, al-Mustapha remains the closest witness of all the dark and shady events which characterised the Abacha era. Today, he is telling his own story and it would appear from the recollection of those who had the misfortune of crossing his path at the apogee of his influence that he is garnishing it with all sorts of sweeteners.
In the culture of sycophancy and the breakdown of discipline that usually characterises the office of CSOs, the al-Mustapha of the pages of newspapers is different from the one that his victims know. If he had participated in a coup; was tried and convicted by a court martial as he allegedly concocted for his victims, and if he had been sentenced with the usual pace of such courts, he would either have been executed and forgotten by now even though his death or imprisonment would not have righted any of the wrongs he was alleged to have perpetrated. That is the bizarre irony of man-made vengeance.
Conscious of his capacity to distort facts and by so doing to turn not just people but ethnic groups against each other, and the damage that his concocted statements are capable of causing to the psyche of a country on its tethers, it is perhaps best to forgive him and let him go with his conscience if he has any. A prolonged trial becomes not just a monumental waste of the time of the courts and an unnecessary comic judicial diversion, but volatile. In America, such a high-powered case would have been transferred to an independent counsel and the documents he withholds and releases at will subpoenaed for speedy trial. What more, all the cases would have been collapsed into a single trial and either discharged or acquitted. Abacha died suddenly in 1998. Most of his alleged victims died before him but today, al-Mustapha is reeling out names of dead people who cannot be subpoenaed to witness.
Unproven and unprovable allegations are not only antithetical to our cultural values to honour the deserving dead, but capable of excercabating the ethno-religious balance of our nation. It is certain that in such instances, the best form of revenge is forgiveness. The wound of conscience distresses more than the worst sore. The forgiven may look like they have escaped justice, but truth is that they live in eternal damnation.
This was my argument in the case of the demented loony, Anders Breivik, who conspired with himself a fortnight ago in Oslo, Norway, rigged a building with explosives and detonated it before driving to a political youth camp where he executed nearly 100 youngsters in his mad hatred of Islam. Ironically, and thankfully too, none of his victims was identified as a Muslim. Today, his country is trying to amend its penalty for premeditated murder, but in a ‘civilised society’, that amendment is unlikely to apply to him because it would then be retroactive. Breivik would spend a few years in jail and wind up as a nutcase but his sentence would be akin to that of Cain who murdered his own brother – he would wind up a vagabond and a wanderer. Long after him, Islam would continue to grow. As his likes abandon their own faith, they cannot prevent others from propagating theirs because the nature of man abhors spiritual vaccum.
Life teaches ironic lessons. About a week ago, 41-year old Mark Stroman, was executed by lethal injection in a Texas prison, ten years after he loaded a gun and attacked three Muslims in a one-man plot for the avenge of the events of 9/11. In an ironic twist, Rais Bhuiyan, a Bangladeshi Muslim and the only survivor of Stroman’s 2001 madness, strongly campaigned for his life to be spared and was one of the last persons to speak to him before he was executed. The other two were not so lucky. They died from their gunshot wounds. In Iran, Ameneh Bahrami, a 34-year old woman who was blinded and scalded by a man who doused her with acid, forgave her attacker just minutes before he was due to face the law of Moses – an eye for an eye. It is a heroic act of faith and the best demonstration of the virtues of love to forgive one’s enemy.
It is on these notes that I strongly recommend that al-Mustapha be set free. His trial and conviction may serve as deterrent to others; but its procrastination is set to tear families apart and may cause bitter inter-ethnic rivalry. What more, it may demonise some people’s heroes and rake up the wounds of people who are scalded but prefer to put their pains behind them and face the future with hope and courage. For the rest of us who are not directly affected, being reminded of the evil of one man or a group of men at a time when his successors have not delivered anything markedly different is even a worse tragedy. If people should try al-Mustapha, it ought to be a system that has done better than Abacha. Governance is so puerile today that some wish they had been left with the evil of Abacha – that is an indictment on governance if not leadership.