“I am Innocent” - Nigerian Pastor Joshua Esosa Sentenced 15
Months In Austria For Drug Cries For Justice
Comments: Reading the account below it
seems the guy is a victim of miscarriage of justice you wonder what our Embassy
in Vienna is doing to help this man!
This is a sad story of a Nigerian who is a pastor in one of the new
generation churches in Vienna called Grace Ministries
International. Pastor Joshua Esosa is from Edo State and in
the narration of his unbelievable ordeal, he recounted how he had been
arrested, framed up and jailed for a crime he said that he had never committed.
His experience as he told it could only be likened to the American HOLLYWOOD
films packed with action and suspense and as such incredible and scary for most
people who are blacks and especially Nigerians living in Austria . We
have heard that similar ugly stories happened many years ago but in recent
years one can vouch that the Austrian police has made tremendous improvement
that experiences like this one of Pastor Joshua Esosa is strange to most of us.
Therefore, my worries which should be the feelings of most people are not
against the Austrian police as an entity but rather against these few groups of
people that have decided to pervert the course of justice by protecting the
real criminal if the story of Pastor Esosa should stand. Consequently, I appeal
to the Austrian police to help and dig out the truth since the crack down is
not against race or colour but rather against evils and agents of Satan within
us. We all should be partners in progress in circumstances like this since
every system in every country is never completely free from bad ones which
Austria is of course not immune to. Therefore, my sincere appeal is not only to
the police authority but to the entire Austrian authority, corporate bodies and
individuals that are concerned that our society is being threatened by idiots
who make hard drugs accessible to our children to help in any way they can to
expose the real offender/s in this case so that this innocent man will be set
free, that is my humbly appeal.
Globalisation of the world is not only in technology but also in the
movements of humans. If Arnold Schwarzenegger who is originally from
Steiermark , Austria could go to the US and rose to a
point to have governed a state like California , a Nigerian, Pastor
Joshua Esosa should not be ruined and destroyed because he could rise tomorrow
to be a wonder turning bishop in Austria . Injustice done to one person
is injustice done to all. Arise, people of conscience!
Here is the story of Pastor
Esosa's tribulation.
“I am Pastor Joshua Esosa from Edo State . My story is
so sad, humiliating and painful each time I remember that bitter experience of
2nd February 2011. On this day, I just closed from the church
and went straight home in twelfth district in Vienna to an
apartment provided for me by the church because as at of this time I had
problems with my wife and because of the nature of the society we are living
in, we were trying to sort out things living separately. At about 11pm on this
day, my wife called me and said that she was sick and that I should come home
to take care of the children so that she could go to the hospital. It was very
unusual that I felt somehow. However, I told her that it was already too late
because it would take me about an hour to get to there now and whether she
could not wait till the next day. She insisted that I should please try to
come. So, I now went to see her. When I got there it was around12 midnight and
I had to press the bell because I did not have the key. And before I could open
the door the police had already accosted and apprehended me and said, ‘You drug
dealer, drug dealer, drug dealer’. And I said, what; me a drug dealer? I
did not even resist them as I allowed them to search me. They searched me and
found €600 with the church cash card and said, ‘Yeah this is the drug money’. I
told them that €400 of that €600 was the money of the church that I had
withdrawn few hours ago from AKH and that if they go to the bank they would see
that what I had told them was the truth.
They searched my bag and did not find anything and they took me that
night to a destination I did not know that it was Burgenland until the next
day. In the morning that day, I guess that it was around 10am because I did not
have a watch, they took me to their office and started to interview me. They
said that they knew me because they had been monitoring me selling drugs for
over a year now and that the people I had sold drugs to were all in prison. I
said, God forbid! They said that they recorded my voice, I then said good if
you did that. So they now showed me some pictures on the computer and asked if
I knew the people and I said that I didn’t know them.
They now brought out the picture of the person they said that they had
been monitoring, and the background was a winter background because the person
was wearing a winter cap that covered his ears. So what they now did was to put
me on my own winter cap and arrange it to look like the picture of the person
they were looking for and took me pictures and then they said if anybody
confirms that they know me in the prison that that would be all they needed. So
they went to the prison and came back and said yes two people had confirmed
that they knew me. I said what? I am not a drug dealer, I do not deal on drugs
and I can never do that. They said that the judge had asked for me to be sent
to prison immediately. That was how I was sent to prison on February 3rd, 2011
and I was there till September 23rd 2011.”
When I wanted to know whether he contacted people for help he replied
and said “of course I contacted the Nigerian Embassy the same February but the
embassy didn’t show up until I was sentenced ending of July 2011 and they now
came in August 2011. I contacted people, my fellow pastors and everybody. The letters
my wife wrote to the embassy are still here.” I collected copies of the letters
from him.
He went on. “I started a German course in the prison and one day while
we were on break during one of our lessons I went back to my room and saw some
strange people in the room and I turned back because I thought that I had
entered a wrong room, but as I made steps to go back my room mate called me to
come in that it was our room. I went in and did what I wanted to do and left
back to the lecture. When our class was over after hours, I came back to my
room and still met these people discussing. I went straight to my corner and
was reading my bible when I had a call that I had a visitor who happened to be
my wife. By the time I went back to the room these people were no longer there
and my roommate now told me that those people that I had seen before, that one
of them had been my accomplice. I said what? Why did you not tell me while they
were here so that I could confront them? I was very uncomfortable with the
development and angry. I said to myself, I had not been allowed to go to the
church in the prison with the reason that my accomplice went to the same church
but now the same accomplice they had brought to my room perhaps to study me so
that he could say that he knew me in the court, I wept. 2 hours later still
infuriated, my lawyer came and I told him what had happened and he shared the
same fears with me but told me not to worry that he would take care of
that.
Before the first hearing they said that they had found powder which I
had used in mixing drugs in my room and I told them that the only thing I knew
that I had there in my room was powdered yam and I did not have any other
powder and if they had found any other thing in my room it meant they had put
it there. They said that they had also found black canvas in my room that was
exactly the same type the drug dealer had worn and therefore it was evidence
against me. On the court day my witness now brought the powdered yam to the
court for the police to see that it was not the type of powder they had
conceived in their minds. The judge now queried them why had they not done an
examination of the powder in the laboratory first before coming to the
conclusion that they had found a powder which I had used in mixing drugs? They
now brought eight people to come and testify against me that I had sold drugs
to them, but I thank God that six of the people said that they did not know me
except those two people that were in the prison. And importantly too,
one of these people that were supposed to have testified against me told the
court that I had not been the one because he still had bought drugs from the
person they had been looking for while I was still in prison. Again the judge
ignored this information.
After this hearing they brought a strange report they had written about
me and I was very upset and down. My roommate, an Austrian who could not stand
my tears and the injustice meted to me anymore, pitied my sorrow and looked at
me one day and told me that I was not the drug dealer. And I said to him; how
did he know that I was not the one? He said that in his former room before he
had been transferred to my room that the person they claimed that had been my
accomplice had been his roommate and that one night he had heard him talking to
someone in a low voice thinking that he had been asleep that I was not the one
but that the real drug dealer was outside and that they were trying to protect
him. I knelt down immediately, wept and begged him. I asked him; please, will
you help me to write down these things you have just said now to the judge or
public prosecutor? And he said that he was afraid to do so because he was also
in prison. I tried as much as I could to convince him to see reasons why an
innocent person like me should not be allowed to rotten in prison, he refused
and I decided to allow him but when my lawyer came I told him the story. My
lawyer now in his wisdom included him as one of my witnesses without his
consent and the day he got a letter from the court as one of my witnesses, he
was very upset and I had to beg him close to tears to help me which he
reluctantly after much pressure accepted.
On the final hearing day he came and told the court what he had heard
and explained further that he had lived with me for sometime now in the same
room and that he had studied me and had seen my kind of person, that I was not
the drug dealer. But the judge shunned his testimony by telling him to go and
sit down because he himself had equally had a drug case before. They now asked
me if I knew these people, referring to those people that were supposed to have
been my drug buyers, and I told them (court) that I did not know any of them
and that I did not deal on drugs and that if I was a drug dealer that these
people numbering over 50 here could not have come all the way from Vienna twice
now to stand by me. I now asked the judge; in your years of experience, have
you ever had the experience where this huge number of people turned out at
different occasions to stand beside someone who is a drug dealer? And the judge
said that what they were expecting me was to say sorry and I said, to say sorry
for what, for what I did not do. He the judge now said okay, that they
sentenced me for 15 months. They asked if I will appeal it. I said yes of
course I will appeal it because I cannot accept what I did not do. And that was
how the process of an appeal was made.
I was finally sentenced around ending of July 2011 and on September 23rd 2011
I was released. I was freed on a Friday and usually our prison closes on
Fridays 12pm so while the door of our prison was opening that day I was let
out, I was thinking that they were bringing in a new person but was surprised
when I was told to pack my things within 5 minutes and leave. I had a bad
feeling going through these sad moments within these few seconds and reacted to
know why I should be asked to leave in 5 minutes under such command after
having been kept here for so long. The person who brought the message said that
he had told me, he closed the door and left. My roommates celebrated with me
and helped me to pack my things. 5 minutes time he actually came, pushed me out
and gave me €50 for my transport and asked me to come on the coming Monday to
take any of my remaining things.
I spent about 8 hell months in that prison, from February 2011 to
September 2011 for a crime I had not committed. I was traumatised for a sin I
knew nothing about probably because I am a black man and a Nigerian. I nearly
went mad for what I never imagined in my life. Over my dead body that I will
deal on drugs as a man of God, my yes remains yes, I am not guilty. As I
speak now, I do not know on which ground or why I was released because
according to the sentence I was not supposed to have been set free before May
2012.
One thing I want the world to know is that, no matter the evidences
manufactured against me, I am innocent. No matter the level of conspiracy
against me, I am guiltless. The God I serve cannot be put to shame because He
did not fail Abraham, He did not fail Hannah, He did not fail Job etc. and He
can never fail me. I am on my knees.”
His wife speaks, “My husband is not a drug dealer. I want justice.”
The story of Pastor Joshua Esosa’s wife which she described as horror
was pitiful and sad because of the shock the children had got.
In nutshell, she said that when the police men had come that day, that
they had already slept and had only woken up by the thunder like noise from the
smashed door by the police. She said that all what she had heard was ‘gbooza’
and that she had to immediately jump up from bed and had to firstly rush to her
last born, her son and that within almost the same seconds that police men had
been everywhere in the room asking about her husband and ransacking all they
could lay their hands on. She had sorrowfully narrated that the children had
been scared to the marrow and that the fear of that horror had terribly
traumatised them which they still have not overcome and may never completely
overcome till the rest of their lives. She alleged that she had been threatened
to lie to make her husband come to the house that night or else that they
(police) would have to take her children to ‘Jugendamt’ (youth welfare office).
She said that under such trembling shock and fear that she had to call her
husband and lie to him as commanded that she had been seriously sick and had to
go to hospital.
According to her, not sure of what to do to the door smashed by the
police, she said that the door had remained un-repaired for about three months
and that they had seen hell under winter cold because they were living with
open door until they could not bear it anymore that they had to call someone
who had carried out a minor repair that had helped them at least close the door
against cold.
Her message to the world is that her husband is innocent because he is
not a drug dealer and she wants the world to help her get justice. In her words
“My husband is not a drug dealer. He has never done that and can never do that
and I will stand for him anytime and anywhere. I want justice, they should free
my husband.”
Efforts made to get in contact with the judge to comment were yet to
yield results before press time.
Please follow this link (click here) to
sign this petition to free Pastor Joshua Esosa. When you sign, it is going
straight to the ministry of justice Vienna , Austria . Help us to
free an innocent man and improve the image of Nigerians and black Africans
in Austria.
The appeal court hearing will be coming up on June 6th, 2012 from 9:30am to 12pm in
Landesgericht, Saal 305/3, Wickenburggasse 22, 1080 Wien.