Nigeria's Top Court Orders Release of Hizbullah Suspect
Nigeria's Supreme Court on Friday quashed the conviction of a Lebanese national who had been sentenced to life in prison for conspiring to import weapons, purportedly on behalf of Hizbullah.
The five judges of the country's top court unanimously ruled that prosecutors made a crucial technical error and should have tried Talal Ahmad Roda in the northern city of Kano, where he was arrested, rather than the capital Abuja.
"The conviction and sentence of the appellant, consequentially, are hereby quashed," Judge Musa Muhammad said.
Roda was arrested with two other Lebanese nationals last year and charged with terrorism related offenses after a large cache of weapons was discovered at his home in Kano, the largest city in the mainly Muslim north.
Prosecutors said the trio were members of Hizbullah and had been plotting attacks against Western and Israeli targets inside Nigeria.
They were acquitted of the terrorism charges, but the High Court in Abuja found Roda guilty of the weapons offense.
It was not immediately clear if Roda was released from custody after the Supreme Court set aside his conviction.
At the time, the arrests raised eyebrows as Hizbullah was not known to have a presence in Nigeria and many questioned why the powerful Shiite Muslim group would be interested in importing a large stock of weapons into the country.
Senior intelligence officials said they would conduct a probe into possible links between Hizbullah and the extremist Sunni group Boko Haram, but experts voiced strong doubts that any such ties existed.
Nigeria is home to a large Lebanese community, especially in the north.
Source: Agence France Presse
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