I SAW HIM CLEARLY ”: DSS WITNESS IDENTIFIES ALLEGED OWO CHURCH ATTACKER

A Department of State Services (DSS) witness on Tuesday identified one of the defendants’ standing trial over the June 5, 2022 attack on St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Owo, Ondo State, is one of the gunmen involved in the deadly assault.

Testifying before the Federal High Court in Abuja, the witness, identified as PW7 and codenamed SSG, told the court that he recognised the second defendant, Al Qasim Idris, during a close-range exchange of gunfire on the day of the attack.

SSG, an Assistant Commander with the Ondo State Security Network Agency, Amotekun, said he was deployed to the church shortly after receiving an emergency alert from his commander.

According to him, he arrived to find scenes of mass casualties with the bodies of men, women, and children scattered within and around the church premises.

“I saw about 35 corpses,” he told the court.

The witness said eyewitnesses informed him that the attackers had escaped in a blue Nissan Sunny vehicle heading towards the Achievers University axis along Ute Road.

He said he and his team pursued the vehicle and tracked it to Ijegunman Village, where the suspects abandoned the car by the roadside and fled into the bush.

“They were four in number. They abandoned the vehicle and ran into the bush. When I searched the vehicle, I found packs of sachet water inside,” SSG said.

He identified the vehicle as a blue Nissan Sunny with registration number AKR 895 AG, adding that two operatives later drove it to the Amotekun office in Owo.

SSG further told the court that he and a hunter attached to his team pursued the suspects into the bush, where they later encountered them.

“They opened fire on us with AK-47 rifles. I responded with my pump-action rifle,” he said.

According to the witness, three of the attackers escaped deeper into the bush, while one hid behind a tree and shot the hunter, killing him instantly.

“I saw him clearly at close range,” SSG said, adding that he could still identify the shooter despite the incident occurring nearly four years ago.

Following an application by the prosecution, led by Ayodeji Adedipe (SAN), and with no objection from defence counsel Abdullahi Mohammad, the court allowed the witness to move closer to the dock to identify the suspect.

SSG stepped forward and pointed at Al Qasim Idris as the man who shot and killed the hunter. He repeated the identification during cross-examination, explaining that he could not arrest the suspect at the time because the defendant was armed with an AK-47 rifle, which he said outmatched his own weapon.

He added that the defendant was later arrested through a joint operation involving security agencies in Ondo State.

Earlier in the proceedings, the sixth prosecution witness (PW6), a pathologist codenamed SSF, tendered a certified true copy of the autopsy report on victims of the attack.

The report, which was admitted without objection, confirmed that the victims died from gunshot wounds that caused severe organ damage, skeletal injuries, and massive bleeding.

“Generally, all the bodies bore marks of gunshot injuries fired from varying distances, leading to fatal internal damage and exsanguination,” the pathologist testified.

The DSS is prosecuting Idris Abdulmalik Omeiza, Al Qasim Idris, Jamiu Abdulmalik, Abdulhaleem Idris, and Momoh Otuho Abubakar over the attack, which claimed dozens of lives.

This marks the second time a prosecution witness has directly identified some of the defendants as participants in the Owo church massacre.