Vice President of policy think tank, IMANI Africa, has accused the police of complicity in the circumstances surrounding the discharge of the Delta 8 on the basis of lack of evidence.
Kofi Bentil says considering that the Ghana Police Service is the best in West Africa, their failure to secure the courtroom before it was attacked in the first place, failure to make immediate arrests and the failure to provide enough evidence to convict the eight accused persons, could not be anything more than a deliberate move to botch the case probably under pressure from politicians.
The eight members of Delta Force, a pro-New Patriotic Party (NPP) vigilante group who had been accused of releasing from police custody, 13 other members of the vigilante group standing trial for assaulting the Regional Security Liaison Officer George Adjei, were on Thursday discharged by a circuit court in Kumasi, after prosecutors filed a notice of discontinuation over what they termed lack of evidence.
Explaining the decision to discontinue the case, Principal State Attorney, Marie Louise Simmons said that the material witnesses in the case had failed to identify any of the eight persons standing trial as being part of the group that stormed the court.
Though her decision has been lauded by many lawyers as being professionally expedient, sections of the general public are not enthused and there have been a lot of criticism of the Attorney-General's (A-G) department.
But Speaking on Joy FM's Newsfile on Saturday, Mr Bentil stated that "the A-G [the person who wrote that report] did nothing wrong because "the A-G does not investigate it prosecutes, the police find facts. They [police] investigate and present the facts to the A-G and the AG will assemble the law on it and use that to determine whether there is a case or not".
According to him, if the police could conduct investigations and produce results in the murder of their colleague, Kweku Ninja who had been killed and buried under the foundation of a building, "it would not be possible to convince a room of intelligent people that the Ghana Police, giving their capabilities as being the best police force in West Africa could not find people who invaded a courtroom in broad daylight and could not assemble the necessary evidence to have them convicted".
"I'm suggesting complicity and I'm not mincing words about it" because "when the Ghana Police wants to work, they work. So please let's go back on this one", he added.
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