Judicial Tyranny In Ghana: Kwaku Azar Pissed With Media’s Silence Over Arrest Of Livingston Bosso

US-based Ghanaian lawyer and scholar, Prof. Stephen Kwaku Asare, has expressed anger at the lack of media interest in what is turning out to be quite a senseless arrest of a 64-year-old Ghanaian man, Livingston Bosso.

In a write-up, the respected legal luminary expresses disappointment in the media for lack of follow-up on the matter in which Mr. Bosso, a retired Quantity Surveyor with the State Housing Company had been picked up like a criminal and detained just because he sent a piece of friendly advice to a Supreme Court justice pal of his to be circumspect about the court’s judgments which are increasingly becoming unpopular.

“Mr. Bosso was allegedly picked up in Rambo style by 4 uniformed police officers and taken to the Blue Gate for sending “a text message to a Supreme Court Judge, who is his old-time friend, cautioning him and the bench to be circumspect in their judgments in order not to court the public’s disaffection for both the bench and the court,” Kwaku Azar fired.

“I read this yesterday and was hoping the media will be all over the story today to update us on who is Mr. Bosso, who is his old-time friend, how did his message become a national security threat, Bosso’s whereabouts, etc. To my surprise, there was absolutely no follow-up. Zero interest in this story that in most places will be the headlines for days.”

Whatsup News is not in the category of soft-livered, politically correct media houses to let such a story go.

Any lack of follow-up was due to the fact that this digital newspaper had not been published at the time, due to interruptions.

The story about the arrest of Mr. Bosso reportedly happened on May 6, 2022, when four terrorists posing as Police officers in mufti accompanied by another in uniform are said to have picked him up in a Toyota Land Cruiser vehicle without any explanation.

And without telling him his crime or reading him his Miranda rights, the man was taken away.

Later, Accra-Based Citi Newsroom would report a son of the man as saying that his father was taken to Blue Gate, a notorious national security installation in Accra.

The family is said to have later been informed that the man was arrested after he had sent a text message to a friend of his who is a Supreme Court justice advising that the bench and indeed the court be careful about giving judgments that court disaffection for them.

If this is true, then the allegation that the man threatened a justice of the Supreme Court may be fabricated.

It gets murkier –a lawyer for Mr. Bosso, Jerry John, is quoted as saying, his client was “Surreptitiously arraigned without informing the families or his lawyer. He was told to plead guilty to whatever charges read to him with a promise that the judge will immediately pardon and discharge him with an instruction to apologise to the Supreme Court judge”.

Cloak and dagger arraignment is frowned upon by the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana which gives every person a right to a fair trial.

Again, Mr. Jerry John is reported as saying Mr. Bosso told him that he was told by the police prosecutor, Inspector Asiedu Brobbey not to let his family know he was being taken to court with the assurance that he would be discharged upon admitting guilt.

“As it stands, we have not seen the charge sheet, we do not know what Mr. Bosso has been charged with and why he is being remanded,” Jerry John is quoted as saying.

The stuff playing out smells of nothing but the doings of the kangaroo courts of the old dark days of military rule in which soldiers high on wee decided the fate of suspects only for a rubberstamp “blue ribbon” jury to declare them guilty.

Mr. Bosso is said to have been remanded into police custody to reappear before the court on May 23, 2022.