Four members of the governing board of the Ghana Rugby Football Union (GRFU) were on Thursday, May 30 convicted of contempt and jailed 21 days each.

The High Court (General Jurisdiction 2 ), presided over by Justice Forson Agyapong Baah committed the four to the custodial sentence after rejecting pleas to hand the convicts a non-custodial sentence for their transgressions.

Their incarceration is in relation to the case ; The Republic vs James Nunoo Mensah and others ex-parte, Herbert Mensah.

The four were incarcerated to restore the dignity and authority of the court, according to the judge.

They are; Abdul Aziz Issah, President of Greater Accra Rugby Association and board member; James Nunoo Mensah, former Vice President of Ghana Rugby; Michael Ako Wilson, board member; and Bismark Amponsah, General Secretary of the GRFU.

The complainant, Herbert Mensah, through his lawyer Dominic Brenya of Sam Okudzeto & Associates, filed the case of contempt against eight defendants including the incarcerated four after an interlocutory injunction order by the High Court to restrain them from organising meetings or elections or making defamatory publications in the name of GRFU went unheeded.

Three others who are staff of the Ghana Olympic Committee were acquitted and discharged while the case was discontinued against the 8th defendant.

The incarcerated four are part of members of the Ghana Rugby fraternity who recently organised an elective congress in December 2023 to elect new board members.

In 2021, the four were also part of a group that organised a special general meeting (SGM) at which they declared that they had sacked Herbert Mensah: former President of Ghana Rugby, and were acting as new board members.

Subsequently, Herbert Mensah filed a case at the High Court General Jurisdiction 2 in 2021, asking the court to declare their declarations null and void. This substantive case is pending at the high court.

The presiding judge in his ruling said that all these meetings and elections and public notices issued for these elections to be held by the four and their assigns constituted willful disregard for the authority of the court, which had previously injuncted them from doing so.

"The law of contempt was promulgated because of people like you," the judge declared in his ruling, adding, "You used tactics that undermined the authority of this honourable court and the administration of justice despite knowing that your actions are against the injunction placed on you." The judge warned the public to desist from disrespecting court orders.