A-G, Dir Gen of BNI And IGP Ordered To Produce Azambawo

AN ACCRA Fast Track High Court has ordered the Attorney General, Director General of BNI, and the Inspector-General of Police to produce one Jacob Azambawo, a peasant farmer at Agogo, who has been incarcerated unlawfully.

The court presided over by Edward Asante, made the order against the three state officers and the district commander of Agogo Asante Akyem after granting a habeas corpus application by the farmer’s lawyer, Asamoah Amoako, requesting that the respondents produce the body of his client.

The lawyer had submitted that his client was not being held for any crime and that he rather went to report some Fulani herdsmen who had been destroying his farm with their cattle, only to end up in cells without an explanation.

He had been moved from one cell to the other since his arrest on December 27, 2011. Although three of the respondents were not in court, the state attorney, Evelyn Keelson, who represented the Attorney-General and the others confirmed they had all received copies of the motion which were served on them by notice.

The judge then ordered them to produce Azambawo at 10:00am and also come and explain the cause of his detention. Mr. Amoako, when he moved the motion, informed the judge that Azambawo who is a peasant farmer at a village called Kowireso at Agogo, was arrested by the Agogo Police on December 27, 2011.

According to him, Azambawo before his arrest in the company of witnesses, had travelled from his village to report a case of the destruction of his farms to a contingent of military personnel stationed at Agogo.

He said the reason why the applicant by-passed the Agogo Police to lodge a complaint with the soldiers was that on about the three consecutive periods that he had reported the conduct of the Fulani herdsmen to the Agogo Police they had always treated his complaint with contempt.

The police, he noted, would always ask him to go and arrest those cattle which destroyed his crops and bring them to the police station before they would take up the matter. “My Lord, the treatment of the Applicant’s complaints in such contemptuous manner by the Agogo Police is not only limited to him but to many other peasant farmers.

“Being alarmed by the previous experiences that the police will not receive his complaint, he had cause to come to the soldiers stationed at Agogo to lodge a complaint and solicit their assistance,” he reiterated.

According to him, upon reporting the havoc caused to his farm to some of the Military personnel, he was asked to sit down and wait for sometime.

While waiting with the hope and expectation to be assisted, some soldiers brought a police officer from the Agogo Police Station who arrested him and threw him into the police cells without taking the complaint he had travelled from his village to lodge.

The police reportedly failed to inform him about the reason for his arrest, detention and his right to counsel of his choice; thus violating his fundamental and constitutional rights.

Mr. Amoako said his pleas to the police to allow him speak to Azambawo while in detention on a phone, as his counsel calling from Accra, was also denied.

Counsel said on December 28, 2011, Azambawo was transferred to the cells of Konongo Police Station but the next day when he travelled to Konongo to have conference with him, he was told upon arrival that he has been picked up by a BNI operative to Accra at about 3:00 am that day.

Mr. Amoako said he returned to Accra with Azambawo’s family members and at the BNI gate at about 7:30 pm on December 29, 2011, Amoako said he saw Azambawo being driven in a white pick-up in to the precincts of the BNI.

Counsel said he followed up to the BNI office and requested to be allowed to confer with Azambawo, but he was denied access to him. “My Lord, the Applicant has been detained for more than 48 hours and the reasons for his detention are not known. “The conduct of the security agencies and for that matter the BNI is unlawful since it is a violation of the fundamental human rights as well as the constitutional rights of the Applicant”.

He subsequently prayed the court to grant his request since the continuous detention of the peasant farmer was illegal.