Anti-corruption campaigner, Sydney Casely-Hayford has described the Bureau of National Investigation’s (BNI) statement that the two Montie FM panelists were harmless as unreasonable.
A statement from the BNI said the two – Alistair Nelson and Godwin Ako Gunn did not have the capability to carry out their threats on the judges since they made the claims “in a show of needless bravado.”
[contextly_sidebar id=”3bWsoJAIZiHQdXzxPDQcxIGdB29LhLOT”]“At the interrogation, the two suspects admitted making those statements and acknowledged that their remarks were regrettable and unfortunate. Further checks by the BNI have however established that the suspects were incapable of carrying out pronouncements but did so in a show of needless bravado,” the statement added.
However, according to Sydney Casely-Hayford, it is impossible to determine anyone’s criminal tendencies after a limited assessment of them, as the BNI did.
“Nobody, particularly where you are not a lawyer or a judge or court, should suggest that they can’t prosecute someone because they don’t think they have the capacity to commit a particular crime on assessment,” Sydney Casely-Hayford said on Citi FM‘s news analysis programme, The Big Issue on Saturday.
“Where’s the yardstick that tells me that someone is capable or incapable of murder? It is a totally nonsense argument to bring a situation up. You can’t look at someone and say this person looks like someone who will steal. You can’t look at anyone and say the person is capable or incapable of a crime.”
Casely-Hayford stated that the issue of a person’s capacity to commit any crime is an irrelevant one as anyone can argue they didn’t commit a particular crime because they lack the capacity to do so.
“If you extend this whole thing of capacity to do something, it means that if I am accused of burgling a house, I can make an argument that it can’t be me because I don’t have the capacity to burgle. That’s not law. It’s totally unreasonable,” he said.
Montie FM panelists, host face Supreme Court on July 12
The Supreme Court has scheduled Tuesday July 12 2016, for the hearing of the contempt suit brought against owners of Accra-based Montie FM, the host of the station’s ‘Pampaso’ programme, and two panelists, who allegedly threatened to kill judges over their handling of the Abu Ramadan suit on the credibility of the voters’ register.
By: Edwin Kwakofi/citifmonline.com/Ghana