THE National Court yesterday told two men charged with attempted armed hold-up of a woman in Port Moresby’s Hohola suburb last February that they both have a case to answer.
Making this ruling yesterday, Justice Panuel Mogish told Joe Oa Meauri and Nigel Miria Aihi to appear this morning to either testify on their own behalf or choose not to do so before he hands down his decision.
This came about after lawyer Luke Siminji, counsel for the accused, presented a “no case” submission.
Mr Siminji pursued his argument on the basis that the evidence in identifying the accused by the two State witnesses proved to be “flimsy”.
The State witnesses included the victim of the hold-up Iamo Mokmok and the arresting police officer Alan Lui.
Mr Lui gave accounts of the event of Feb 28, 2006 in which Ms Mokmok was arriving at her home in Hohola One when she was allegedly held up by the two accused who were armed with a home-made gun and a knife.
Ms Mokmok told the court yesterday she was arriving from work when three men held her up outside her home at 5.30pm last year.
However, her neighbours screamed for help, alerting a passing police van which stopped and gave chase on foot and arrested the two accused.
Ms Mokmok’s account of the incident was backed by the State’s second witness, arresting police officer Const Lui from the Hohola police station.
Const Lui said he and his officer-in-charge were just leaving the premises of the police station when they were alerted about the robbery and gave chase to two young men they saw running away from the scene of the attempted crime.
He said they caught the suspects and charged them with attempted armed robbery.