The Court detects a degree of inconsistency in the written pleadings of the Applicant. On one hand, the Applicant claims that “in the course of the hearings and interrogations, no recorded telephone conversation was tendered in court against him” (page 3 of Application); but on the other hand, he pleads that “the trial proceedings is going to be exceptionally and fully furnished with the transcriptions of the telephone conversations” (page 3 of Application). Mr. Djibril Yipéné Bassolé’s Application, at any rate, makes reference to those conversations, but as a means of corroborating the existence of same, he defers to newspapers meant for the general public, which themselves are not assertive enough of the statements made on the subject; thereby, he even defers to mere “rumours”. This last word (i.e. “rumours”) is often resorted to in the written pleadings of the Applicant, and as frequently used as the word “press”. No particularly exact court process is filed in the case-file in respect of the alleged telephone conversations. The impression of uncertainty and perplexity is reinforced by the Applicant himself, who paints a picture which only seems to “suggest” that there may have been “a fabricated court process dating back to … whoever knows” (page 4). In other instances, the Applicant uses the conditional tense – a tense denoting uncertainty – in speaking of his alleged recorded telephone conversations, as on page 6, where he again writes that: “The disputed recorded telephone conversations may have been carried out from 17 September 2015 onwards.” The Court must admit that this leaves a huge gap to be filled in the case; the Court finds that the case-file does not contain any decisive pleading which may provide evidence for proving that the said telephone conversations had any effect on the Applicant’s criminal status, to any such extent that may warrant that the Court pay any particular attention to his case. The issue of the recorded telephone conversations is surrounded by shadowy images and conjectures, opacity and approximations, preventing the Court from making any pronouncements thereupon. Nothing was produced before the Court concerning the telephone conversations alleged. The Court notes that even if the two Parties did profusely argue on the very principle concerning restricting the right to privacy through the instrumentality of tapping conversations on the telephone, the two Parties did not in any way indicate with certainty, the impact such recorded telephone conversations may have had during the procedure. 14

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