Justice Emeka Nwite of the Federal High Court, Abuja, has admitted additional confessional statements and a Digital Forensic Examination Report in the trial of five defendants accused of involvement in the 5 June 2022 attack on St. Francis Catholic Church, Owo, Ondo State, in which 41 people were killed and 140 others injured.

Justice Nwite also admitted a Tecno mobile phone said to contain communications exchanged among the defendants before and after the attack.

The exhibits were admitted following the absence of objection from counsel to the defendants, Mr. Abdullahi Mohammed.

At the proceedings, the Department of State Services (DSS), which is prosecuting the case, formally closed its case after calling 11 witnesses in support of the charges.

Justice Nwite subsequently adjourned the matter until 4 and 5 March for the defendants to open their defence.

Earlier, defence counsel informed the court that the defendants would testify in their own defence and that he could conclude their case within one day. He, however, urged the court to direct the DSS to grant him access to the defendants in its custody to avoid any impediment to preparing their defence.

At the hearing, the DSS’s final witness, identified by the code name PSSK, a senior operative in charge of forensic and counter-terrorism operations, recounted how he and his team were deployed to Owo to trace, locate, and apprehend those responsible for the attack.

He told the court that geospatial network filtering technology was deployed to analyse thousands of mobile phone lines that had been in contact within Egbeka and Ifon.

According to the witness, the process narrowed the investigation to the phone of the fifth defendant, Idris Abdulmalik Omeiza, leading to his arrest in Ifon, Ondo State.

He stated that Omeiza’s confession led to the arrest of the four other defendants. Forensic examinations, he added, showed that they were engaged in a series of communications before and after the attack.

The witness further told the court that three of the defendants made several calls both before and after the incident, indicating that they knew one another, and maintained that their arrest resulted from technological investigation rather than coincidence.

Under cross-examination, the operative disclosed that the post-incident investigation lasted more than a month. He added that all five defendants were arrested in August 2022 at different locations in Kogi and Ondo states.