By NATION REPORTER
A 48-YEAR-OLD chief of security at Sarova Hotel has testified how he was instructed to download Closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage relating to former State House press aide, Amos Chanda by the Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC).
This is in a case in which the DEC is alleging that Chanda destroyed a court record.
Antony Mtonga testified before Lusaka Principal Resident Magistrate Irene Wishimanga that on October 27, 2022, three DEC officers led by the arresting officer Boyd Munalula ordered him to download CCTV footage and to hand it over to them.
“The general manager of the hotel instructed me to give DEC whatever they would request and so I went to the CCTV room and we started viewing footage of everything that happened between 20:00 hours and 23:30 hours on September 30, 2022,” Mr Mtonga said
The state then filed an application that the court moves to Sarova Hotel to view the footage that Mr Mtonga had referred to.
In her ruling, Magistrate Wishimanga said: “I have taken judicial notice of sentiments from both sides and hereby rule that we shall only move to Sarova Hotel to see the facility from where the footage was extracted and not to view the footage because that footage is not there anymore.”
“The footage on the flash will be viewed from this courtroom. That is why these digital facilities were installed in this courtroom,” she said.
Another defence lawyer Agrippa Malando said there was no need to view the footage from Sarova Hotel when the court had sufficient capacity to play the footage within the court premises.
Mr Malando said whatever the prosecution wanted the court to see was in the safe custody of the DEC
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