Liberian drug trafficker gets life imprisonment
Moshi. A Liberian, Grace Teta Gbatu40, has been slapped with a life imprisonment after being found guilty of trafficking 10,064 grams of heroin valued at Sh603.8 million.
The sentence was passed yesterday by the High Court-Moshi Zone Acting Principal JudgePatricia Fikirini , before state attorney Agatha Pima who was among four state attorneys who prosecuted the case.
Reading out the judgment, Judge Fikirini told the accused that the court was satisfied with evidence produced by nine witnesses and 13 exhibits tendered in court by the prosecution and proved beyond reasonable doubt that the evidence and the exhibits were strong to convict her.
The prosecution, which also involved senior state attorney Omari Kibwana and two other state attorneys Veridiana Mlenza and Sabitina Mcharo, told the court that the accused committed the offence on December 1, 2013.
Due to the Prosecution’s statement and evidence given in court, the court was told that Grace was arrested at Kilimanjaro International Airport (KIA), moments before travelling to Freetown, Sierra Leone, through Nairobi, Kenya.
The court was told that while she was under inspection, security officers at the airport suspected and called her for thorough inspectionwhereby in each bag between the two she had had contained a small black bag.
The court was further told that inside each of the small black bagswere narcotic drugs and that when the accused was questioned at KIA’s police station by the Kilimanjaro Regional Crimes Officer (RCO), the former admitted trafficking the narcotic drugs.
