Court grants bail to cocaine suspects
There was wild jubilation by sympahtisers of Abu Nallah, Chief Executive Officer of Tudu Mighty Jets, a football club, and nine officials of the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) when they were granted bail on Monday by a circuit court in Accra.
The accused persons were each granted GH¢70,000 bail with a surety to be justified, in addition they are to deposit their passports with the court’s registry.
The accused persons, Fatimatu Abdulai, Dennis Adutwum Gyimah, Yakubu Issaka, Timothy Aboloimpo and Peter Ansong, Mutawakilu Yahaya Iddi, Jerry John Kwesi Abbiw, Eric Darko Akuffo and Nana Zamsah Evrah are on trial for alleged narcotic related offences.
They all pleaded not guilty to abetment in the importation and exportation of narcotic drugs.
The ruling followed two earlier applications by lawyers of the accused persons on August 26 and September 9 for their clients to be granted bail because there was nothing to connect them with the charges before court.
Mr Eric Kyei Baffour, the trial judge giving his ruling, stated that most of the accused persons, who were arrested and charged were NACOB officials stationed at the Kotoka International Airport.
He said during the trial, lawyers for the suspects applied for bail for their clients because they argued that the charges preferred by the prosecution against them did not support the case.
Mr Baffour asked defence lawyers to file a formal application for bail and serve it on the Attorney General, which they duly complied with on September 16.
He said Mr Anthony Rexford Wiredu, Principal State Attorney, prayed for an adjournment on that day since he was short served to file an affidavit in opposition, which the court granted.
Mr Baffour said at the last adjourned date, the prosecution failed to file an affidavit in opposition, the court, therefore, allowed the defence to move their respective applications.
He said the facts on which the accused persons had been incarcerated were upon the arrest of Fatimatu Abdulai, who mentioned names of the rest, and there was no indication that they neither admitted Fatimatu Abdulai’s statement as the truth nor were there any independent corroborative facts to support the charges.
Mr Kyei Baffour stated that the principle of law was well settled that the out of court statement of an accused implicating a co-accused was not binding on the one implicated when that statement had been repudiated.
“Basis is that a statement from such an accused is impugned because there is always the suspicion that he/she may remove attention from his own criminal conduct and focus it on others,” he added.
Mr Baffour said that”even under the Amended Criminal Code, Act 714 it is only offences in part One and Two of the law that the court cannot grant bail but not every offence under PNDC Law 236 that the discretion of the court to grant bail has been taken away”.
He said the offences, which the accused persons were facing were under part seven of the law and not part one and two, which the law did not allow bail and therefore the argument by Mr Wiredu that the accused persons could not be granted bail was false.
In July this year, a suspected narcotic drug dealer, who has been on the wanted list in the US, was arrested at Dansoman in Accra, and during investigations text messages were allegedly received from Fatimatu on his cell phone.
The text messages revealed that Fatimatu of the Procurement Unit of NACOB had been aiding the suspected drug dealer and others to import and export narcotic drugs through Kotoka International Airport.
Fatimatu was arrested and during interrogation admitted the offence, and mentioned some NACOB officials and personnel of other security agencies, including the accused persons, as accomplices who compromised their positions and allowed drug couriers safe passage after receiving various sums of money from them.
Source: GNA