By Ismail Auwal
A Kano Magistrate Court has ordered the release of Jamila, the wife of Abdulmalik Tanko, the alleged killer of 5-year-old Hanifa Abubakar.
SAHELIAN TIMES reported how she testified against her husband at a Kano High Court on Thursday.
Jamila was accused of conspiring with her husband to kidnap and subsequently murder the Haneefa.
However, the presiding Judge Justice Usman Na’abba set her free on Friday.
The Prosecution Counsel Attorney General and Commissioner of Justice Musa Abdullahi Lawan, on Thursday, sought to tender two confessional statements of the defendants.
Tanko, the schoolteacher who admitted to abducting and killing Haneefa while in police custody, however, denied the murder charges leveled against him.
The defence counsel Mukhtar Labaran Usman objected to the admissibility of the statements, arguing that the statements of Abdulmalik and Fatima were taken under threat and compulsion urging the court to dismiss it relying on section 29 sub section 2 and 3 of Evidence Act 2011.
Earlier in his submission during trial within a trial, Ridwan Ibrahim, an investigative officer attached to Kano Command’s anti-kidnapping squad, told the court that he took the defendants’ statements without any threat or compulsion.
He denied using an electrical device on the witness while he was taking his statement.
He told the court that he took the statement in front of his colleagues, noting that there was light, a fan, and an open detective office where the statement of the party involved in the case was taken.
