The High Court of Sierra Leone on Thursday, 7th May, dismissed a lawsuit by politician Sylvia Olayinka Blyden against the Chief Observer of the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU-EOM) in the 2023 general elections, Elvin Incir and other senior officers.
Ms Incir and her colleagues were named in the defamation lawsuit in which Blyden accused them of unfairly referencing her in the EU-EOM’s report on the conduct of the 2023 general elections in Sierra Leone.
The Court ruled that it lacked the power to try the case, citing the Diplomatic Immunities and Privileges Act, which provides protection from local criminal and civil proceedings for international organisations, diplomats, and other persons. This also means that persons covered by this law cannot be arrested, detained, tried or subjected to similar legal processes for their official duties except in circumstances where their immunity has been waived.
In October 2023, Blyden filed the case at the High Court of Sierra Leone against publications she considered “malicious” and “defamatory”. She announced her court action on social media, stating that she had filed a “writ of summons at the High Court of Sierra Leone, targeting the Chief Observer Evin Incir, Deputy Chief Observer Inta Lase, Social Media Analyst Lukasz Wilda Domaradzki, Legal Analyst Sylvian Ollier, and the European Union Elections Observation Mission (EU-EOM)…”
The said observation mission’s report was published on 10th October, 2023, months after the June elections. The report mentions Blyden in its media monitoring section, as well as its analysis of the role of influencers and party dynamics. In one instance, Blyden’s “growing friendship” with the First Lady, Fatima Bio, while “at the same time showed growing contempt for some of the members of her own
Party” was cited as an example of how affiliations and alliances shifted during the campaigns. This, Blyden deemed defamatory.
In a press statement published on October 12, 2023, a few days before the lawsuit was filed, Blyden accused the EU of seeking to “criminalize a beautiful relationship” between herself and First Lady Fatima Maada Bio with a “pejorative reference” to their relationship. She claimed that Ms Incir, the Chief Observer and her colleagues “profusely demeaned” her for being in a sisterhood relationship with Mrs Bio, which she considers a good example of political tolerance and co-existence.
As her attempt in Freetown collapses, Blyden probably has to explore courts elsewhere for the justice she seeks–something she hinted at after she filed the lawsuit.
“The documents I submitted today in Freetown mark just the beginning. I also intend to approach the European Court of Human Rights in France, fighting for the restoration of my reputation,” she wrote on social media in 2023.
Before she switches to “Plan B”, if she has not already, Blyden would have to comply with the court order, which includes a NLe 150,000 in legal costs incurred by the defendants. The deadline for this payment is Tuesday, 12th May.
A letter from the Law Officers’ Department to Blyden states that they have been instructed to enforce the judgment. There are various enforcement measures available to the Court, ranging from seizure and sale of movable property or goods to garnishee, which requires a bank to pay the legal fees directly from the accounts of the defaulting party.
Sylvia Blyden’s initial reaction to the verdict has been defiant. In a post on Facebook, she referred to government officials as “incompetent idiots”, calling the letter addressed to her as “hasty and stupid”. Blyden also said she would not be distracted from the recent scandal involving the seizure of a ship the Spanish authorities say was from Sierra Leone, carrying close to a billion US Dollars’ worth of cocaine.
Blyden’s case is the first against an election observation mission in Sierra Leone, but certainly not the first against an entity that is protected by diplomatic immunities. In 2016, businessman Olufemi Hebron sued the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding Office in Sierra Leone (UNIPSIL) for breach of contract. The outcome was similar. The case was dismissed on the same grounds: the United Nations was protected by the Diplomatic Immunities and Privileges Act, as well as the Vienna Convention. The difference though is that Hebron was not ordered to pay any costs by the Court.
As if Blyden was predicting the outcome of her own case, she wrote on social media that she hoped diplomatic immunity would not be used to derail her case. Here we are and we wait to see what happens next.
