Monrovia – Mary T. Broh walked into Criminal Court “C” on Tuesday and gave the defense something it had been missing in the Saudi rice trial: a story jurors can follow.
By Rodney D Sieh
In her telling, nobody stole anything. The rice was rescued, stored in the government’s own warehouse, logged in and out with gate passes, and some of it went to feed hungry young people cleaning up Monrovia ahead of President Joseph Nyuma Boakai’s inauguration.
It was a confident performance. It also put the President’s name into the court record, which is sure to keep this trial on the front page for a while.
But jurors will have to decide more than whether Broh sounded believable. They’ll have to decide whether her account explains the rice the government says it can’t find. Her testimony does less on that point.
She Has Skin in the Game
Broh came to court as a subpoenaed witness for former Foreign Minister Dee-Maxwell Saah Kemayah and his co-defendants. She is also named in the same indictment she called “character assassination.”
That doesn’t mean she’s lying. It does mean prosecutors will remind the jury, probably more than once, that in defending the others she is also defending herself.
She had a ready answer. She said she turned over documents to investigators that could trace the rice, and asked why anyone planning a theft would do that.
Jurors may find that convincing. But it also sets a test. If those records are complete, they should match the numbers. If they don’t, the defense will have handed prosecutors their best evidence.
Why Was Foreign Affairs Involved?
The government’s case leans heavily on the claim that Kemayah and others took over a job the law gave to the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA).
Broh said the Foreign Ministry was involved because the rice came from Saudi Arabia, and relations with other countries are its business. She described a meeting at the GSA with Foreign Affairs, Internal Affairs, NDMA and GSA, where minutes were taken and the agencies agreed to work together.
If the defense can produce those minutes, they could matter a great deal. It is hard to call something a secret takeover when NDMA was in the room.
Still, Broh can’t settle whether the Foreign Ministry had legal authority to direct disaster relief. That is for the court, and prosecutors will argue that working together is not the same as having the power to act.
GSA as the Right Place
Broh’s simplest point may be her strongest. GSA, she said, is the government’s custodian of property and runs warehouses for donor supplies, emergency goods and mosquito nets. NDMA, she said, didn’t have room for that much rice.
If jurors buy that, the transfer of 13,895 bags from NDMA to GSA looks less like the start of a diversion and more like ordinary storage.
The trouble is that storage is not what the case is about. The government’s complaint is what happened after the rice reached GSA. Putting rice in a warehouse doesn’t explain rice that later disappears.
The Cleanup Rice
The most politically charged part of her testimony concerned about 1,050 bags.
Broh said John-Charuk Siafa, now Monrovia City Mayor, showed her a letter from then-President-elect Boakai appointing him to coordinate the inaugural cleanup. The letter, she said, told him to contact her for help. When cleanup workers complained they hadn’t eaten, she said, she told Siafa to write the Internal Affairs Ministry, and rice was released.
Nothing in that account suggests President Boakai ordered the Saudi rice handed out. What it does is tie a Boakai transition activity to the start of a chain of requests that ended with donated rice going to cleanup crews.
That helps the defense on theft. Rice released by a ministry at an official’s request is not rice carried home.
It may help less on another charge. The donation was meant for disaster victims and vulnerable communities. Even if no one kept a single bag, feeding inauguration cleanup workers could still be treated as misapplication of entrusted property.
Jurors will also notice who hasn’t testified. Unless Mayor Siafa or former Internal Affairs Minister Varney Sirleaf takes the stand, or the letters are put in evidence, they have only Broh’s word for how it happened.
The Numbers
This case is increasingly a fight over arithmetic, and Broh didn’t end it.
The donation was 29,412 bags. Prosecutors say 11,200 bags were already at GSA and 13,895 more came from NDMA, for a total of 25,095. The indictment says 25,054 bags were diverted or unaccounted for.
Those figures are only 41 bags apart, which suggests the government is treating nearly everything that passed through GSA as missing. Yet former Deputy Internal Affairs Minister Momolu Johnson testified that 2,281 bags were still sitting at GSA, and questioned how another 720 bags were counted.
If Johnson is right, the government’s total is too high. But if the defense’s own gate passes can’t account for the rest, a smaller number may still be enough.
Where It Leaves the Defense
Broh gave the defense a legal basis for GSA holding the rice, a reason for Kemayah’s role, and a humanitarian explanation for at least some of the disputed bags.
What she didn’t offer, at least so far, is a full account of where the rest of the rice went. Her gate-pass system is only as good as the paper behind it, and the jury hasn’t seen that paper yet.
Cross-examination, and whatever documents make it into evidence, will decide how much her testimony is worth.
The defendants have pleaded not guilty and are presumed innocent unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The trial continues.
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