AG’s office denies Dame’s counsel claims in Hanan case

The Attorney-General’s office has pushed back firmly against allegations that the former CEO of the National Food Buffer Stock Company was denied access to his lawyers following his re-arrest, accusing the former Attorney-General who raised the claims of bypassing proper legal channels to score public points.

Deputy Attorney-General Justice Srem Sai addressed journalists at the High Court premises in Accra on Thursday, May 7, dismissing as baseless and misleading the assertions made by former Attorney-General Godfred Yeboah Dame, who had alleged that Abdul-Wahab Hanan and his wife, Faiza Sayyid Wuni, were being kept out of reach of their legal team.

Justice Srem Sai’s sharpest criticism was directed not just at the substance of Dame’s claims, but at how he chose to raise them, through the media rather than directly with officials of the Economic and Organized Crime Office, the body holding the couple.

He argued that going public with such allegations, rather than engaging institutional channels built for legal redress, risks distorting public understanding of due process and weakening the very structures designed to handle such disputes.

The row erupted after EOCO re-arrested Hanan and his wife moments after the Office of the Attorney-General dropped all charges against them, citing fresh evidence. Their legal team, led by Dame, said they had been shut out from seeing their clients for more than 24 hours after the re-arrest.

“They have been denied access to counsel. Junior colleagues of mine who are at EOCO say that as of about 11 o’clock, they have not been given access to them. They have not been allowed to see their clients,” Dame said in an interview on JoyNews.

The Attorney-General’s office has flatly rejected that characterization, leaving two sharply conflicting accounts of what is happening behind EOCO’s doors, with Hanan and his wife caught in the middle.

Source: myjoyonline.com