A member of the governing New Patriotic Party Communication Team, Wunison Jam Khan says Ghanaians should be worried about the posture and pronouncements by the Special Prosecutor, Kissi Agyebeng in recent times.
Mr. Jam Khan said although the Special Prosecutor is a luminary in the legal field, his utterances and position on issues lately are not in sync with the laws of the country.
He cited the position the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) took after Charles Bissue, who is being investigated over corruption allegations, secured an interlocutory injunction restraining the OSP from executing an arrest warrant against him to back his point.
“I think we should be worried with the way the Special Prosecutor is behaving and the kind of pronouncements that he is making,” he said on State of Our Nation.
“This is somebody who is very senior and respected within the bench and at the bar. But some of the pronouncements especially the latest one that talks about the fact that the Special Prosecutor has the police powers to arrest anybody at all anywhere, anyhow even without an arrest warrant, I beg to differ”.
The OSP had secured an arrest warrant against Mr. Bissue and subsequently declared him wanted following his failure to honour the office’s invitation to him as part of investigations into his alleged involvement in acts of corruption during his tenure as Secretary to the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining (IMCIM).
But the former presidential staffer challenged the action of the OSP at an Accra High Court, arguing that the warrant was wrongfully procured and would infringe on his fundamental human rights if it was executed.
The court upheld his argument and issued a temporary injunction barring the OSP from enforcing the arrest warrant.
But before long, the OSP issued a statement and asserted that it has the powers to arrest Mr. Bissue or any other person suspected of corruption even without a bench warrant.
This, Mr. Khan argued, is ultra vires. While acknowledging that the OSP has the power to arrest, he contended that such power must be exercised in accordance with Act 30 of the Criminal Law.
“When the court said that it was setting aside that arrest warrant, he issued a statement and said that he doesn’t even need an arrest warrant to arrest somebody and the statement purported to portray that he has some special powers aside the powers that Act 30 gives to the police which he draws from”.
“They all draw their powers from the same law and I’m saying that if you look at that law, he doesn’t have any superpowers from anywhere and we should be worried about the kinds of pronouncements and the things that the Special Prosecutor do,” be emphasised.
