Thirty-five-year-old businessman Daniel Koranteng has been remanded in custody by the Madina District Court after being provisionally charged with murder.

Speaking on The Pulse on Wednesday, March 19, the lawyer criticised the police for what he described as an attempt to curtail his client’s freedom without proper grounds.

“The matter has been going on for six years if you think if have something on the suspect, I believe regarding the way they came to court, if they had the fact right, the circumstances surrounding all the fact they put around that my client run was on the run.

“Those are not the proper facts, he traveled. For someone to travel and come back to Ghana for a murder case that you have been on for six years and he has just traveled with a clear conscience and he come back to Ghana and you just put facts together and say that he has run out of the jurisdiction and came back and all that are not proper facts, they are not true,” he said.

Expressing concern over how the case is being handled, he condemned what he called a misuse of police authority.

“If you come to court to say you will proffer proper charges, then why was my client arrested in the first place? The police are using brute force to curtail the freedom of a Ghanaian citizen. We just hope the court will not support such lawlessness. If there is no evidence, then let the person go. There is a presumption of innocence, not a presumption of guilt,” he said.

Mr Essel criticised the practice of keeping suspects in remand without proper evidence, describing it as a ‘constructive conviction’ that undermines the judicial process.

“Remanding someone in custody without solid proof is retrogressive to our judicial system. Why can’t you conduct a thorough investigation before putting someone on trial for murder? If you don’t have any substantial evidence, why keep him detained?” he questioned.

The lawyer described the charges against his client as “shambolic”.

“The so-called evidence is just circumstantial claims pieced together. The charge itself is shambolic. There is no evidence or fact to support it. How can you accuse someone of revealing pictures in one breath and in the next, charge him with murder? It doesn’t add up,” he stated.

He urged the police to conduct proper investigations rather than rushing to prosecute without solid proof.

“I don’t have to do their work for them so I don’t know what they want. They just want to remand him, and that is why they came up with these bogus charges today,” he said.

This was after the Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Godfred Yeboah Dame clarified that his office has not received any prosecutable docket or action regarding the murder.

While investigations are ongoing, the Minister noted that four suspects were initially detained to assist in the inquiry.

However, they were later released on police inquiry bail after eyewitnesses failed to identify them.

Ahmed Suale was tragically killed on January 16, 2019, by two unidentified individuals on a motorbike with a covered license plate. The incident occurred in Madina as Suale was returning from a family meeting.

During a parliamentary session on Tuesday, the Minister emphasized that the murder of Ahmed Suale is among many pending cases.

Five years on, the police are yet to furnish the Attorney General with compelling evidence about the case.

The Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Godfred Yeboah Dame, told Parliament yesterday that the Police are yet to submit any docket for prosecution to his office.

Dr Ken Ashigbey is not pleased with the police’s silent posture on the case.

“It is so sad to think that after 5 years, the police have not been able to put anything together. I think that it is a travesty of justice that we have people who put their lives out there to protect all of us when it comes to the issue of free speech and then they will be treated in this manner by the Ghana Police, its very shameful,” he told JoyNews.

READ ASLO:

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