By Mohamed K. Turay
State security personnel attached to the Presidential Lodge at Hill Station in Freetown have been accused by the former deputy Minister of Health and later deputy Education Minister in the Ernest Bai Koroma-led administration, Mahmoud Tarawalie, of forcefully taking his vehicle from his driver last Wednesday.
Narrating his ordeal to journalists on Tuesday at the Brookfields conference room of the All People’s Congress (APC), Mr Tarawalie said that they left Makeni in the early hours of Wednesday 22 February whilst accompanying Dr Samura Kamara, the newly elected presidential candidate of their party, to Freetown from Makeni.
The former Minister explained that whilst they were at Jui, in the Western Rural District, he instructed his driver to use the Regent-Grafton Road so that he could park the vehicle at the party’s headquarters whilst he, Mahmoud Tarawalie, decided to follow the convey of their presidential candidate.
He stated that whilst at Shell New Road in the eastern part of Freetown, he continuously received distress calls from his driver. Upon answering his driver’s call, according to him, he could not get what his driver was saying due to the noisy background.
He continued that he had to come down from the vehicle he was in to call his driver to know exactly what he was saying. The response, he said, he got from his driver was that his vehicle had been taken away from him by some Presidential Guards at the Hill Station Lodge.
Mahmoud Tarawalie said when he asked his driver what led to his vehicle being seized; the only response he got was that because he (the driver) was wearing red clothes whilst at the same time the vehicle had stickers of Dr Samura Kamara on it.
“Upon hearing the news, I immediately rushed to State Lodge to ascertain the true story. The security personnel on duty at the time could not give me any valid reason why they took my vehicle unlawfully”, he stated.
He noted that one senior security officer told him to go home and come on Friday and promised him faithfully that his vehicle would be handed back to him but that all efforts to retrieve his vehicle proved futile.
When asked whether he had reported the matter to the security apparatus; he disclosed that he had reported the incident to the CID and was assured that the security personnel involved would be invited to CID headquarters.