The Federal Government on Wednesday said the co-owner of Amigo Supermarket, Mustapha Fawaz, and two other Lebanese, facing terrorism charges, spied on Israelis and other foreign nationals in Abuja.
The suspects, the Federal Government also said, placed some strategic buildings in Abuja under surveillance.
Federal Government prosecutor, Simon Egede, stated this after tendering a video of interview sessions in which the suspects made statements to the State Security Service.
Fawaz and his co-accused- Abdallah Thanini and Talal Roda- are facing 16 counts of terrorism, following their arrest in connection with an armoury in Bompai, Kano.
Egede said the suspects also took their unnamed foreign collaborators around Abuja in search of the Israeli Embassy.
He added that the suspects and their collaborators used the Sheraton Hotels and Towers building to capture various strategic buildings in the Federal Capital Territory in an unauthorised surveillance operation.
Video compact discs, containing recordings of the interviews, were admitted in evidence by the court presided over by Justice Adeniyi Ademola.
A prosecution witness, an SSS technician, played short excerpts of the videos in the courtroom.
Egede, who spoke to journalists after the court session, said the videos confirmed the charges against the Lebanese.
He said, “Our last witness brought a video of all the interview sessions.
“These have been tendered in evidence and it corroborates the confessions made by the accused persons and the testimonies of all the other witnesses.
“The videos confirmed the unauthorised and illegal surveillance carried out by the first accused person (Fawaz) along with his foreign collaborators, where they captured different strategic buildings in Abuja, while perching on top of the Sheraton building.
Earlier, counsel for the suspects, Robert Clarke (SAN), said the videos did not disclose any fresh facts against his clients.
His clients, he said, had already admitted that they received military training from Hezbollah.
He however added that the training the suspects received in 1991 was in line with the Lebanese policy, which mandated their young men to undergo military schooling.
Cross-examining the last prosecution witness, Clarke alleged that some “white people” also interrogated the suspects, an exercise he claimed the SSS did not record.
However, the SSS technician refuted the allegation.
The technician said, “I am not aware of any interrogation, I am only aware of the interview.
“Our agency is standardised, every interview must be recorded. To do otherwise would amount to an illegality which the agency does not condone.”
Justice Ademola adjourned the matter to August 2, 2013, for the suspects to commence their defence.
