The Taraba High Court 1 presided over by the State’s Chief Judge, Justice Joel Agya, on Friday, sentenced Yusufa Adamu and Adamu Abdullahi to death by hanging for kidnapping.
The convicts were sentenced for the abduction of Balkisu Kambe and Maryam Musa in Gashaka Local Government area of the state in 2019.
Delivering the judgement, Justice Agya, ruled that the prosecution counsel had proven beyond reasonable doubts that the duo committed the crime.
The Court also convicted the duo after finding them guilty on the charges of criminal conspiracy and illegal possession of fire arms, where he sentenced each of them to 10 years jail term on each offense without an option of fine.
The Judge also ruled that the sentence on criminal conspiracy and illegal possession of firearms was effective from 2019 when the convicts were arrested and detained.
The Court also held that the defendants had made confessional statements individually about the kidnapping of Balkisu Kambe at Angwan America in Baruwa on September 29, 2019, and that of Maryam Musa on September 2, 2019 at Serti and others in Gashaka Local Government area where they collected ransom.
He noted that one of the victims, Kambe identified the defendants as members of the gang that abducted her when they could not find her husband in his room on that day.
The convicts, the Judge said, unmasked themselves when their victim to the bush for two days before her husband sent them N1,000,000 ransom.
“Based on Section 3, Paragraph 8 of the Kidnapping and Abduction Law of Taraba 2019, I hereby sentence you to death by hanging on the neck, may God have mercy on your souls.
“You however, have the right to apply to the Committee on the Prerogative of Mercy for the sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment, especially since no life was lost in the process of kidnapping,” the Court ruled.
The Prosecution counsel, Mr Samson Gimba, in his reaction, hailed the judgement as sound and commendable.
On his part, Counsel to the convicts, Mr Mahanar Puki, made an allocutus plea on behalf of the defendants, pleading for mercy ahead of the sentencing.
Puki in his plea for mercy had told the court that the convicts were first-time offenders and had shown remorse throughout the period of trial.
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