A former Attorney General, Martin Amidu has strongly defended the Principal State Attorney, in the matter of the Delta Force saga, describing the decision to drop charges held against the suspects as incontrovertible.
In his latest epistle, on the fall out from the discharge of the 8 Delta Force members, Mr. Amidu said the the State Attorney was not bound to refer to the decision of the Attorney General for agreement.
He said:”the Ashanti Regional Office of the Attorney General did an excellent job did an excellent job expected of professional prosecuting attorneys in setting forth the legal advice in such a way that anybody wishing to replicate the methodology to find out whether or not the conclusions are valid may do so. As professional lawyers representing the Attorney General they were perfectly within their delegated authority under the constitution and the laws of Ghana to have arrived at the conclusions they did based, as it were, on the docket presented to them by the Ghana Police Service/CID.”
The eight were freed after the Principal State Attorney in the case, Marie Louise-Simmons, came to the conclusion of dropping the charges against the suspects because of lack of evidence.
However, the outcome of the case has generated huge public uproar with the Minority NDC condemning the decision.
The Attorney General Gloria Akuffo has ordered investigations into the circumstances under which the Principal State Attorney in Kumasi entered a nolle prosequi and got eight of the suspects discharged for lack of evidence.
But the former AG in his assessment of the controversial case described the State Attorney’s handling of the matter as unassailable on the facts and evidence.
“The offences with which the suspects were charged are not one of those cases in which standing instructions have been given to the regional offices of the Attorney-General to refer dockets to the Head Office for concurrence before the issuance of legal advice to the police. The Ashanti Regional Office was therefore perfectly within the exercise of its prosecutorial discretion to deal with the case without further reference to the Attorney General in Accra. “
