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Mr Alfred Kojo Triddles, the Spokesperson for Media Consult Group delivering a speech at the press conference in Accra. Picture: PATRICK DICKSON
Mr Alfred Kojo Triddles, the Spokesperson for Media Consult Group delivering a speech at the press conference in Accra. Picture: PATRICK DICKSON

Group adds voice to calls for release of Montie trio

The pressure on President John Dramani Mahama to free the Montie trio is mounting, with a number of groups and individuals calling on him to exercise his prerogative of mercy.

Some ministers of state, sympathisers of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), lawyers for the trio and the convicted persons themselves have already sent petitions to the President to pardon the convicted persons.

The Chief of Staff, Mr Julius Debrah, last Monday presented the petition of lawyers for the three contemnors and a civil society organisation, Research and Advocacy Platform, to the Council of State for consideration.

Sentence

The two panellists, Alistair Tairo Nelson and Godwin Ako Gunn, and the host, Salifu Maase aka Mugabe, were on July 27, 2016, sentenced to four months’ imprisonment by the Supreme Court for scandalising the court.

They were also ordered to pay GHc10,000 each or in default serve an additional one month in prison.

The two panellists, spurred on by Maase, threatened the lives of judges of the superior court, especially those who heard the case on the credibility of the country’s electoral roll, filed by Abu Ramadan and Evans Nimako against the Electoral Commission (EC).

The trio, together with the directors of Network Broadcasting Company Limited (NBCL), operators of Montie FM, the radio station where the comments were made, and ZeZe Media, owners of the station frequency, were on July 18, 2016, convicted for contempt of the apex court.

“Harsh sentence’’

An advocacy group known as Media Consult Group is the latest group to add its voice to the “free the Montie trio campaign.’’

The group has appealed to the President to free the Montie trio.

At a press conference in Accra yesterday, the group described the sentence of the trio as “barbaric and inhumane’’.

The Spokesperson for the group, Mr Alfred Kojo Triddles, said although the group respected the conviction of the trio, the sentences meted out to them were “needlessly harsh, especially in the face of the remorse shown and pleas by the trio’’. 

He said the trial leading to the sentencing was also “completely unfair’’.

“The judges acted solely as their own investigators, police, prosecutors, and more critically, constituted their own jury and ended up formulating their own judgement. Equal to a description of man’s tyranny to man,’’ he said.

Appeal 

The group, therefore, appealed to the President to invoke his prerogative of mercy as stated in Article 72 of the 1992 Constitution. 

That, Mr Triddles explained, would “arrest the travesty of justice that has been done’’.

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