Tyrant Akufo Addo Sneaks In Criminal Libel -Cages ASEPA’s Mensah Thompson For False News

The Police in Teshie on Wednesday detained Mensah Thompson, the Executive Director of the Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability (ASEPA), as the repelled criminal libel and sedition laws clandestinely creep back to the fore.

The new criminal code which has been gleefully subscribed to by the judiciary has been cloaked in what the security agencies often describe as “publication of false news”. Those who are perceived to have fallen foul of that ominous code have been arrested, bound with chains and handcuffs, and put on trial like hardened criminals.

Several journalists, including Whatsup News Editor-in-Chief, David Tamakloe have been given criminal treatment for information that the security agencies subjectively categorise as false.

Mr. Mensah Thompson had been detained after he had honored an invitation by the Police in connection to a complaint by the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) in regards to his claims that President Akufo-Addo had traveled with family and friends on a presidential jet for shopping in the UK. Mensah Thompson has since retracted and apologised for the claim though.

Thompson was arraigned today, Thursday, February 10, 2022, at the Kaneshie District Court.

The ASEPA boss had alleged that the shopping trip had been undertaken between December 20 and 30, 2021. He had therefore demanded explanations from the National Security, Ghana Armed Forces and the Defense Ministry over the use of the presidential jet.

GAF had responded by dismissing the claims and urging Ghanaians to disregard them. However, the ruling New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) National Youth Organizer, Henry Nana Boakye demanded that Mensah Thompson be arrested over the allegation.

This was in spite of the fact that Mensah Thompson had retracted and apologized. “In the same medium I made the earlier publication, I withdraw the publication pending an official response from the GCAA. I unreservedly apologize to the Ghana Armed Forces if their image was in any way affected by my publication. We shall put out for your consumption the response to our request from the GCAA records of the Falcon 900-EX.”, he posted on social media.

Since the ASEPA boss has already apologized, it is strange that the GAF has still gone on to start to lodge a complaint against him.

US-Based law Professor, Kwaku Asare said he is getting concerned about that and questions “whether the criminal libel laws have made a comeback through the backdoor.”

“Gogo calls on the police, prosecutors and judges to halt the hostile attack on the media and the right to free expression. People who feel defamed have a course of action in tort…We have come too far to be taken back to the dark days,” Professor Asare said in a recent Facebook post.

On August 2, 2001, ex-President John Agyekum Kufour gave his assent to the repeal of the criminal libel law and the laws of sedition which was a vestige of Ghana’s authoritarian past where citizens were brutally tortured or put on trial for saying things that the political leadership felt was making them “unpopular”.

Incidentally, President Akufo Addo was one of the key advocates for the repeal of the law when he was in opposition at the time. His government has ironically been the most supportive of the return of this criminal code that has resulted in countless attacks on free speech in Ghana under his regime.

In fact, a number of people have been killed for expressing what the security agencies and ruling party apparatchiks consider to be making the Akufo Addo administration “unpopular”.

A prime example is Mohammed Kaaka from the Ejura Township in the Ashanti Region, whose social advocacy for better living conditions for his people was regarded as “making the government unpopular”. One night, he was brutally stabbed and pummeled to death after some NPP supporters angry at his advocacy had warned that they would get rid of him.