Treason trial: eleventh prosecution’s witness appears in court
Mr Kabral Mohammed Ayambillah, Cyber Security and Digital Forensic Officer with the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB) appeared before the High Court in the treason trial involving ten accused persons.
The 11th prosecution’s witness, led by Ms Winifred Sarpong, Representing the Attorney General, said on October 14, 2019, a letter from the NIB requested for examination of some electronic devices with a court order was received by the outfit.
In the evidence-in-chief, the Prosecution’s witness said the items which were sealed in an envelope contained ten mobile phones and three tablets labelled with the names of the accused persons and others.
Forensic tools were used to extract data or other materials from the devices and some of the names on the devices were Bright Debrah, Callister Ziaba, Colonel Samuel Gameli, Donyo Kafui alias “Ezor” and Dr Frederick Mac Palm, said the witness.
Witness said together with others who formed a team, the content of the cellular phones were extracted, adding that out of the 13, 11 devices were successfully extracted.
All the extracted data was put in an external hard drive, put it back in an envelope, sealed it, issued a report and submitted it to the investigation Department of NIB through the Director General of NIB.
Prosecution’s witness said after the investigation team was done with the analysis of data, the technical department printed out some data from the hard drive.
The Court heard that data printed included the WhatsApp chats between Dr Mac Palm and some numbers saved as ACP Dr Benjamin Kwasi Agordzo, Dr Albert Sam, Johannes Zikpi and a WhatsApp group named Take Action Ghana’s Executive platform, stressing that all the data was found on a Samsung Galaxy S7 phone belonging to Dr Mac Palm.
Mr Livingston Ameebor, who held brief for Mr Ephraim Vordoagbu, Defense Counsel for Dr Mac-Palm, asked whether an IT expert could infiltrate the devices and make changes to the conversation, but the witness said no.
Mr Eric Pongo, Defense Counsel for Colonel Gameli, ascertained whether the witness found a conversation between Callister, a nurse at Dr Mac Palm’s hospital and Colonel Gameli but witness said, no as the team did not go through the extraction but the investigation team.
Mr Lamtiig Apanga, Defense Counsel for Warrant Officer Class Two Esther Saan, said a screenshot of the data would have produced the exact contents of the devices rather than extracting them.
Witness agreed and added that it was only what was accessible on them that were extracted.
He said the results were misleading because half of the content was produced as symbols due to the limited ability of the extraction tool to produce exactly what were contained in the devices.
Mr Ayambillah disagreed and said the symbols represented a missing media.
Source: GNA