By Anna Laura Magyarlaki | Development Associate
This October, AdvocAid celebrated some great news: our Makeni team was able to secure the release of two of our clients, a mother and her son who had been behind bars for over a year. Upon their release, our team made sure they would be able to get home safely and start afresh with the help of a start-up grant.
This is their story:
In 2017, Sento’s* two sons got into a fight that ended badly, with the opponent’s father killed. Sento rushed to the scene, but she was unable to separate the fighters. She and her two sons were arrested, despite the fact that none of them had raised a hand to the deceased.
Sento and her older son's matter was charged to High Court, but their case was adjourned repeatedly as the witnesses and complainants wouldn't show up. After the 20th adjournment, they were granted bail but, as they had no-one to stand as their surety, they remained behind bars. Even worse, Sento's younger son - who is still under 18 - was separated from them and taken to the Freetown Remand Home.
As the matter was adjourned so many times, AdvocAid’s duty counsel representing Sento was able to successfully plead for her release. All charges were dropped and Sento and her older son are now back at home. During their year of detention, they had lost much of their safety net and social network. If not for AdvocAid’s support they would have struggled even to get home, as their village was more than 25 miles from the correctional centre in which they were held. That is why it is essential for us to support our clients, even after release Providing even a small start-up grant of 500,000 Le (approx. $50), like we did for Sento, can be of great help.
Sento's younger son’s trial is still on, however thanks to our Freetown paralegal's intervention, he has been granted bail, so he could join his mother and brother at home.
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Cases like Sento’s are far from rare in Sierra Leone where an under-resourced and often unjust criminal justice system can end up trapping innocent people for years. AdvocAid would not be able to support them without your continued help. On behalf of the people we work with, thank you for your generous donations to AdvocAid.
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* Names changed to protect clients’ identity.
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