Wayne Jordash, lead counsel for the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) Special Court indictee Issa Sesay defence in an exclusive interview told Awoko the reason why they decided to file a motion of subpoena for former president of Tejan Kabbah. Mr Jordash said that the application made by the defence team has huge merit, and that the prosecution’s response has none. Due to this, “I think Kabbah was in a unique position to be able to provide evidence of Mr Sesay’s innocence so to that extent I think the subpoena should be issued and I think Kabbah should be ordered to provide that evidence.” The evidence of the former president ,the lawyer said, is related to the UNAMSIL count on the indictment and the evidence of Tejan Kabbah is very important to prove the innocence of Issa Sesay. Stressing that “Kabbah’s evidence is directly on specific issues that is the UNAMSIL count and particularly what evidence Kabbah has about communications between Sankoh and Sesay or as we say lack of communication between the two over the issue of the UNAMSIL incident.” He continued “what we say is the information that Kabbah could provide with reference with the prosecution allegation that Sankoh ordered Sesay to lead attacks on the UNAMSIL between May and September 2000. We say that Kabbah knows perfectly well that Sankoh could not do have done that because Kabbah has ordered Sankoh’s arrest and he was held without communications to the RUF leadership. With regards to that Kabbah clearly he can provide evidence which can rebut the prosecution’s allegation.” Questioned whether the evidence of ex-president Kabbah is to sensationalise the trial , the defence lawyer said that the purpose of Kabbah’s evidence is to obtain the truth. General Opanda, and before that we will have Brigadier Alie Hassan will be giving evidence on Friday on the defence of Issa Sesay. We don’t need witnesses that will sensationalise the trial we have more witnesses as important as Kabbah and as distinguished and as high profile as Kabbah. So we don’t need high profile witnesses simply to bring publicity to the case we need witnesses to provide concert evidence such as president Kabbah it is about obtaining truth about the innocent of the accused” Speaking alignment to both sides Wayne Jordash disclosed that there is not reason for the ex- president to align himself to either the prosecution or defence as he should only be interested in helping the court to know where the truth is and that there is no need for the for Ex- president Kabbah to be hostile if they succeed in getting him to testify for the accused. As was the case of the late Chief Hinga Norman who included the name of the ex president Kabbah as his witness but at the end of the day could not get the president to testify in his defence, the Issa Sesay defence team did not include Kabbah on their list. Questioned on the reason for this? Mr Jordash said “we can’t name a witness in the list unless the witness agree to give evidence and Kabbah actively avoid the defence team. His name was not included in the list because we think it will be highly improper to include someone in the list when they had not agreed to be a witness. This is not only improper but potentially dangerous because there is a degree of possible security risk in giving evidence for either prosecution or defence that is a proposition which is being accepted by the trial chamber in their special measure decisions.” He continued “Kabbah has not indicated his willingness to testify. So to place his name to the public domain as a witness for the Sesay defence would not have been true and we would have placed him in some sort of security risk so the way to do it is, obtain the evidence first whether it is as we think it is important evidence and then and tell the court about his willingness to testify and at that stage we can worry about adding it to our witness.” As this is not the first such request has been made, the first was the late Samuel Hinga Norman but was dismissed by the trial chamber, for the RUF the lawyer said “each case has to be decided on the merit.” “One has to look at the importance of the evidence which is being served by the party and we will say the evidence in our case is much more important than it was in the CDF case. In that the evidence in our case he could sincerely prove that Mr Sesay was innocent with relation to the UNAMSIL count on the indictment. In the CDF case it couldn’t be argued as it can be in ours that the evidence is paramount to prove innocence that is the difference” he added.