The incarcerated former Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, Tsatsu Tsikata, is reviving the hopes of innocent persons languishing in jail for their possible release.
“Mr. Tsikata, whiles in prison, is rather assisting people out there in prison who shouldn’t be there and he draws our attention to some of those issues and we pick them up.”
Mr. Kweku Mortey, a member of the Free Tsatsu Movement, disclosed this on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show on Tuesday.
The Free Tsatsu Movement, a pressure group clamoring for justice for Tsatsu Tsikata who is serving a five-year jail term at Nsawam Medium Security Prisons, says it is broadening its scope to ensure that all and sundry in Ghana is treated justly.
Mr. Mortey noted that some of the people Mr. Tsikata has come into contact with in prison have their cases taken up by the Movement and some are presently pending before the Appeal Court. “Yesterday I was in court on one of such cases”.
“The broader issue is for attention to be drawn to all issues of injustice,” he emphasized.
The group, he said believed that the need for people to stand up against such injustices is long overdue, and in the case of Mr. Tsikata, he maintained the man “is just not guilty, he is completely innocent”.
Mr. Mortey admitted exhibiting signs of cowardice years back and promised “from now on I will stand up” against injustice.
He said Ghanaians should make it a duty to ensure that the judicial system does what is right by making their voices heard.
“You get abhorred when you hear the voice of a clearly capricious and bias judge sentencing a man, bending all the rules. We believe the Supreme Court has the opportunity to set aside this process, but we also believe, beyond that Ghanaians must be conscientized to realize that they have a stake in the work of the judiciary and therefore they should always make their voices heard.”
When probed by the programme host, Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah, whether their actions would not even aggravate issue and deplete Tsatsu’s chances of being released, he explained that the Movement is not attacking the judiciary but a specific court ruling which he described as “obnoxious”.
According to Mr. Tony Lithur, a leading member of the Movement, “it would be quite unfortunate” should the Supreme Court fail to reverse the lower court’s decision merely because of their activities.
He also suspected political vindictiveness behind Tsatsu’s incarceration and would therefore be a “bad precedent” for the judiciary to “stamp its approval” on the ruling.
By the 18th June 2008 ruling of an Accra High Court, Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata was found guilty of four counts, however, Mr. Lithur said, “The prosecution did not succeed in proving the case that Mr. Tsikata was reckless or fraudulent or willful in a decision to invest in Valley Farms, I think it also failed to prove that there was a lost in this particular case."
He described the incident as both “morally and legally wrong”.
Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata is expected to appear in court on 16th of October 2008. Meanwhile the Movement would soon take its campaign to Ho, Cape Coast and Tamale respectively.
Story by Isaac Essel
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