The circumstances surrounding the release of Ellis Tamakloe from prisons are turning murkier by each passing day as attempts by The New Crusading Guide to elicit official explanation from the Ghana Prisons Service hit a snag last Friday.

Although the paper had booked appointment with the Prison Authorities at Nsawam in the Eastern region to follow up on the matter, events at the nation’s most populous prison proved otherwise.

When the Special Investigations Team (SIT) contacted the Prison Authorities on the issue on Wednesday, the Head of Communications directed the team to contact the Officer in Charge at Nsawam for further information because the Headquarters in Accra did not handle such issues concerning granting of bail.

He then placed a telephone call to the Officer in Charge at the Nsawam Prisons to assist the SIT with any relevant information relative to the release of Ellis Tamakloe from their confinement.

On arrival at the Nsawam Prisons last Friday the investigation team was told by the Guard in charge that the Senior Officer in charge at the Prisons was in a meeting with some officers and that there was no way this paper could meet him or her until the meeting was over.

Although a reliable source told the team that the meeting ended around 2pm, the Officer in Charge never showed up as at the time the SIT left the premises around 3:45pm. 

Information from the Prisons Authorities was needed to complement responses from the offices of both the Chief Justice and the Attorney General and Minister of Justice which are expected to be received this week.

The New Crusading Guide last Thursday sent a letter to the office of the Chief Justice, Mrs. Georgina Wood, requesting for further information on the circumstances surrounding the release of Ellis Tamakloe from prison custody.

The request became necessary after our Wednesday, October 16, 2013 publication under the banner headline: “Scandal: Drug convict ‘’left off the hook’’; granted bail and leaves Ghana after Losing review application at Supreme Court", had generated some public debate.

Portions of the letter to the CJ read “We are reliably informed that your good office has set an action in motion to delve into the matter and for that reason we request that we are kept in the know in order to continue to consolidate our mutual cooperation and also to adequately inform the general public on the steps being taken by the Chief Justice to weed out any unconventional tendencies in the Judiciary”.

Indeed after the first publication on Wednesday, October 16, 2013, The New Crusading Guide received a telephone call from the office of the Chief Justice also requesting for further and better particulars of our story to enable the CJ take immediate action on the matter. A similar letter was also sent to the AG’s office.

It would be recalled that on Thursday around 2: 00pm, Ellis Tamakloe, in the company of his lawyers (name withheld) came to the office of The New Crusading Guide to correct what they described as anomalies and inefficiencies in the publication.

Although they declined a formal interview, declined to be identified, and also to submit a rejoinder as they were entitled to, Tamakloe’s lawyers provided some court documents that according to them were self explanatory and made their case valid.

According to the lawyers, as at now Ellis Tamakloe’s conviction still holds, his ten years sentence also still holds but rather, it was with respect to the enforcement of his human rights in relation to the date from when his sentence should be counted which they took to the human rights court on 28th April 2013 and won.

This new application, according to the lawyers, came on the back of an earlier one they made which was not granted.

The documents, dated 28th April 2013, which Tamakloe’s lawyers showed to us read in part that, “That the learned High Court Judge erred when he treated the action as an application for review of the sentence imposed on the applicant by the Trial Judge rather than the application for the enforcement of the Fundamental Human Rights of the Applicant enshrined in Article 14(6) of the 1992 Constitution in refusing the application”.

“That the Learned High Court erred when he held that the applicant’s only avenue to seek redress for a breach of his Fundamental Human Rights was to appeal against the sentencing rather than institute a fresh action as prescribed by the 1992 Constitution and the Rules of Court. That the Learned High Court judge erred when he held that the applicant had not acted timeously in instituting the action.”

However, a legal source who has expertise and vast experience in legal jurisprudence, in an interview with The New Crusading Guide last week opined that, “The man in question was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in April 2007.

Sentencing takes effect from the date it is passed. So his being in custody from 2006 is neither here nor there. The Prison authorities are on top of all these sentencing guidelines and would let out a convict as soon as his sentence is served”

According to the source, “It did not have to take any application before a Court to let him (Ellis Tamakloe) out. If the sentence was fully served, why the need for the application and an application for bail for that matter? The argument that his time in custody from 2006 should have been considered and that was what the Court considered cannot be sustained. He was given the minimum sentence permitted under law and no Court has the power to give a sentence below the minimum. His 10 years therefore started from the date of judgment not the date of arrest”.

The source concurred that indeed article 14(6) of the constitution says “time spent in custody before trial should be taken into account” but it does not say that, time spent in custody before trial should be deducted from the minimum legal sentence.

That notwithstanding, the legal luminary further argued that, if Mr. Tamakloe “still wanted to make that argument it should have come at the appeal stage not when he had exhausted his appeal and review.

In any case, my understanding is that this was the argument he made before the first Human Rights Court which was dismissed so why did the Lawyers go to a second Human Rights Court with same application which had been dismissed”.

“There's only one High Court and if you are dissatisfied you move up to the Court of Appeal so now that he's been granted bail pending appeal what is the appeal he intends to pursue? Has he still got a right of appeal? No. The man had just some few months to finish serving his term and I think all this was unnecessary and doesn't help him in getting back into society”, the source asserted.

Meanwhile, a well-placed close source at the Attorney-General’s department disclosed to this paper over the weekend that the office is divided on the interpretation of Article 14(6) of the Constitution which says that time spent in custody before trial should be taken into account when a Judge is passing sentence, relative to the Ellis Tamakloe saga.

Please stay tuned for further developments...