By Alfred Munda SamForay
The family of CDF indictee, Chief Samuel Hinga Norman(photo) has written a letter to the Registrar of the special court for Sierra Leone expressing grave concerns about the health and wellbeing of the chief.
The letter is dated 19th April 2006 and is addressed to the Registrar of the court with copies to Presidents Ahmad Tejan Kabbah of Sierra Leone and Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, the Foreign Ministers of Canada, Great Britain and the United States as well as the court’s medical Officer, Dr. Donald Harding.
In the letter signed by Mrs. Josephine Norman and her children, Samuel Hinga Norman, Jr., and Florence Norman, the family states:
“We, the family of Chief Samuel Hinga Norman wish to draw your attention to and seek an urgent up-to-date report regarding his health and wellbeing. Our concern is based on the fact that for quite sometime now, our father and husband has not only complained about being unwell but has also been observed on several occasions to be using a wheelchair and walking-stick to aid his mobility,”.
The letter draws attention to the fact that the sixty-six year old former military officer was “an active and healthy man” prior to his arrest on 10 March 2003 and attributes his poor health “mainly due to lack of appropriate medical and recreational facilities at the special court detention center.”
The family is asking the Registrar and the Chief Medical Officer of the court to provide them with “an up-to-date medical report as well as any information regarding plans for appropriate treatment and care.”
“We respectfully draw your immediate attention to and prompt action on this
Matter,” the letter concludes.
Mrs. Norman herself has been in therapy since suffering a partial stroke during the January 6, 1999 rebel incursion into Freetown and has not seen her husband in over seven years.
In addition to the general concern regarding Mr. Norman’s state of health, both the Norman family as well as the families of Mr. Moinina Fafana and Dr. Alieu Kondewa is concerned about activities at the Detention Center with respect to the person of Chief Samuel Norman.
"We are reliably informed that on or about 25 April, 2006 Chief Norman was clandestinely removed from the Detention Center on orders from the Chief of Security and taken to Hill Station for what was described as a medical checkup", the family members said in the letter. They continued:
"It has been a general understanding with the detention officials that if at any time Mr. Norman or any of the CDF officials in their custody are to be physically removed from the facilities for whatever reason, their families and or the lawyers must be consulted and if at all possible present. We are aware that Counsel for Chief Hinga Norman was only informed after Mr. Norman had already been returned to the Detention Center", the family noted.The letter continues:
"More grievously, we are also reliably informed that on or about 20 April 2006, Mr. Norman’s passport was unceremoniously returned to the court on orders from the Chief of Detention. This we believe was in conjunction with plans by the court to remove Mr. Norman from Sierra Leone for medical treatment in a country not of his choosing. We are also reliably informed that the Republic of Ghana was approached for this dubious action but Ghana refused to assume responsibility for Mr. Norman’s security and the plan may have been shelved both for lack of a host country as well as the families’ protests over sending the chief abroad without the benefit of family visits. Discussions for the chief to be taken to Western Europe or the United Sates where family and friends would have access to him were unsuccessful". The Norman family concluded with alarm:
"West Africans are acutely aware of previous cases where former Ghanaian President, Osagefo Kwame Nkrumah, and Sierra Leone’s former Prime Minister, Albert Michael Margai, both died in foreign hospitals during political exiles from their respective countries. It is also of great concern to the Hinga Norman-CDF Defence Fund that the Ministry of Internal Affairs which oversees immigration and national security is reportedly unaware of the transactions regarding Chief Norman’s passport."
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