Ex-AG Godfred Yeboah Dame slams detention of Abronye DC
The ink on the High Court’s bail ruling had barely dried when Godfred Yeboah Dame stepped before journalists and made clear that, in his view, Abronye DC should never have seen the inside of a detention facility in the first place.
The former Attorney-General and Minister for Justice did not limit his criticism to the bail denial, he questioned the legitimacy of the entire prosecution, describing the remand of NPP Bono Regional Chairman Kwame Baffoe as “very unhealthy” for Ghana’s democratic foundations.
The Accra High Court had earlier on Thursday, May 21, granted Abronye DC bail of GH¢100,000 with two sureties, ending a detention that Dame said had stretched to nine days and eight nights in BNI custody, time he considered not just excessive, but fundamentally inconsistent with how cases of this nature should be handled.
“It is something that shouldn’t have occurred in the first place, because in matters like this bail ought not to be refused at all,” Dame stated plainly.
He pushed his argument further, contending that even a conviction on the charges, spreading false news under allegations tied to Sections 207 and 208 of Ghana’s Criminal Offences Act, would likely result in a fine or non-custodial sentence rather than imprisonment. That reality, he argued, decided to remand Abronye DC even harder to justify.
“Even after conviction, bail ought not to be denied and based upon the decision of the court, even upon conviction there ought not to be detention of the person,” he said. “If sentence or fine is ordinarily to be applied, then clearly it becomes improper that the person upon arraignment before the court should be detained for about two weeks.”
Dame also took direct aim at the choice to pursue criminal proceedings at all. In his assessment, what the police complaint actually described was closer to a civil defamation matter than a criminal one, centred, he said, on comments alleged to be derogatory and abusive in nature.
“A cause of action lies in the civil realm for defamation. It ought not to be a basis for the institution of criminal proceedings,” he stressed.
The sharpest part of his critique, however, was reserved for what he described as a pattern, not an isolated incident. Dame alleged that the current administration was deliberately weaponising Sections 207 and 208 to silence critics and opposition voices, turning laws meant to protect public order into tools of political suppression.
“I think there is a gross abuse of Sections 207 and 208 by this government and it is all because they just want to muzzle people and prevent free expression of views,” he asserted, calling the development “reprehensible” and urging “all right-thinking members of society” to speak out against what he characterised as a growing intolerance toward dissenting political opinion.
For Dame, Thursday’s High Court ruling was not vindication enough, it was simply the correction of something that should never have gone wrong in the first place.
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