A British man who was sentenced by a Nigerian court to be hanged for the murder of his Australian lover has appealed his conviction, his defence team said on Tuesday.
”We have very strong grounds for the appeal and we are going to upturn the death sentence,” said lawyer Obiora Atuegwu Egwuata, a member of defence counsel Emeka Ngige’s chambers.
”The court has not fixed a date for hearing of the appeal because the records of proceedings are not yet ready,” he said.
Ian Millar, a 54-year-old long-term resident of Nigeria, was convicted last Thursday of the murder of his 43-year-old partner Anne Marie Gale, with whom he shared a home in Lagos.
As is mandatory for those convicted of murder under Nigerian law, he was given a death sentence and was sent to the city’s Kirikiri maximum-security prison to await his appointment with the gallows.
Very few if any sentences have been carried out in recent years in Nigeria, under an informal moratorium instituted by several state governors.
The court heard that Millar strangled Gale in April 2002 and concealed her body from domestic staff for several days before the crime was discovered and he was placed under arrest.
But the defence will argue that the conviction — which the prosecution accepts was based mainly on circumstantial evidence — is unsafe and should be thrown out, Egwuata said.
According to a copy of the grounds of appeal obtained by AFP, the defence will argue that investigators failed to interview one of two security guards working at the couple’s home.
The prosecution also failed to produce drugs and other items found at the victim’s bedside, despite listing them as evidence, the document lodged with Lagos Court of Appeal says.
In addition the judge was mistaken to say that a medical report stated that Gale died as a result of strangulation, when the document simply referred to ”asphyxia/respiratory failure”.
The appeal will also seek to refute the judge’s conclusion that Gale had been dead for a week when found by police, arguing that food found in her stomach had been eaten only four hours earlier.
”By leaning heavily in favour of the prosecution, and at the same time ignoring any favourable case for the defence, the trial judge abdicated her role as an impartial arbiter,” it says. — Sapa-AFP