Thu, 15 Feb 2018 09:36:53 +0000
By JUSTINA MULENGA
A CUSTOMER Service officer of Zambia Airports Corporation yesterday told the magistrates court that the bags which bore Nigerian prophet Isaac Julius Amata ‘s names had different weights from what was indicated from the country of origin.
This is a case in which Amata is alleged to have trafficked and imported a psychotropic substances namely, 26.29 kilograms of Ephedrine.
When the matter came up for start of trial before magistrate Brian Simachela, Chimbiya Banda, 28, testified that he was assigned by his supervisor, Beauty Choolwe, on January 24 2018, to work from the arrivals hall on that particular day.
Banda told the court that any passenger bags arriving or missing were reported to him and was in charge of reporting what bags had arrived and which ones were missing.
He testified that after the passengers had arrived and cleared out, he noticed that there were two bags by the baggage belt left behind and checked their tags which both had the name Amata on them.
Banda said one of the two bags was red and the other was blue in colour and had tags which corresponded to the flight he had attended to when the bags arrived.
“I took a glance at the immigration and noticed that there was still a passenger and I could not leave because I had to wait until the passenger was cleared at the immigration,” he testified.
He said after a while a lady from the South African Airline arrived to check on what time the bags had arrived and which bags were left behind.
Later two ladies came and put the two bags in the trolleys which were bearing the name tags of the passenger, Amata who denied to be the owner of the blue bag but admitted that the red bag was his, Banda said.
He testified that when the passenger refused the blue bag bearing his name, he was prompted to call security to come and check as the bag had a different weight from the one indicated on the tag stuck on the bag.
Banda told the court that when he weighed the two bags, the total weight was 2 by 40 kilos instead of 2 by 26 kg’s which was on the two tags of the bags.
He further testified that the blue bag was rejected by the system as it was bearing false weight from what was entered in the system.“I opened the bag and found some whitish powder wrapped in a bundle, but could not identify what it was, I further requested to have some Drug Enforcement officials to come and identify what was in the bag,” he testified.
Due to time the court adjourned the matter to today to finish with the witness.
