The President of Think Tank IMANI Ghana, has described the sentence handed to the gunman who went to the President John Dramani Mahama’s church with the intention of killing him, as a travesty of justice.
According to the IMANI boss, the failure of the trial judge to order an assessment of the mental status of the suspect given the claims he had made in court was regrettable.
[contextly_sidebar id=”mpU4NZ4KZu87GdgfkAAlwUKUbnwSVRoy”]Franklin Cudjoe lamented over the fact that Charles Antwi was not represented in court by a lawyer who he believes would have prevented him from giving the self-incriminating evidence he did.
“To have been hauled before a judge and within a matter of hours, the judge, without any psychological evaluation and given the utterances that he made [was not right]. Even if he were possessed, I don’t think he would have made such utterances,” Mr. Cujdoe said on Citi FM‘s News analysis programme The Big Issue on Saturday.
Charles Antwi was convicted of the possession of an illegal firearm and sentenced to 10 years in jail.
He confessed to the court that he went to the church to kill the President in order to assume his position and “save Ghana.”
The sentence has been criticised widely with many suggesting that it was rushed, as investigations into the matter had not been completed.
Franklin Cudjoe added that the manner in which the suspect went about his plan to kill the president suggested he might be unstable.
“My initial reaction when this was reported was if anybody wanted to assassinate the president, they would either be a sniper or might deploy the tactics of Boko Haram or ISIS and kill himself or herself as well. Even if the person decides in this case that he was going to be President, walked into the church and was fidgeting with a gun but had not shown that he was going to fire it.”
“If he was picked up and confessed, that person is unstable, deeply unstable. It should have been apparent to those who captured him that he was unstable. There should have been further investigations.”
By: Edwin Kwakofi/citifmonline.com/Ghana