The All People’s Congress (APC) National Publicity Secretary, Sidi Yaya Tunis, in the recently conducted press conference of the party has revealed that over 200 members and supporters of the APC are still in police custody.

He described that most of them were wrongly arrested and detained simply because they were APC members or Supporter of the party.

Mr. Tunis declared a number of their supporters were arrested during and after last year’s August 10 Riot and that police arrested them because someone pointed fingers at them though they had no idea about the protest.

According to him, police also arrested and detained their supporters because someone accused them of making statements they felt strongly about or against the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) government of President Julius Maada Bio.

Mr. Tunis requested the Sierra Leone Police (SLP) to be autonomous in their decision instead of allowing themselves to be controlled by some quarters belonging to one political group, thereby preventing them from serving the people generally.

He also accentuated the “barbaric behavior” of some SLPP followers who burnt down houses belonging to APC supporters including their party’s offices mainly in the southern and easterm parts of the country before the June 24 general elections.

He also stated that they did not see policies as a fight but as a contest of ideas and policies to serve the people unlike the SLPP.

According to him, most of the destruction that took place before, and during. and after the June 24 general elections including the killings of innocent citizens could not have happened if the SLPP was genuine, rational, and really committed to serving the people of Sierra Leone.

The APC Publicity Secretary asked the SLPP to pray so that the APC would not call for a national protest or sit-down action as they had supporters in every part of the country. He remarked that the APC had never called for such an industrial action because they loved the country and knew that doing such would paralyze the entire nation.

He made those statements while addressing issues raised by the party’s 2023 presidential candidate, Dr. Samura Mathew Wilson Kamara, in a press conference on Tuesday at the party’s Old Railway Line Brookfields headquarters in Freetown.