The Human Rights Court on Wednesday adjourned the case involving 10 officials of the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) who are standing trial for alleged deals in narcotic drugs to enable the defence lawyers to rectify some anomalies in their application for bail. The lawyers had filed a motion at the court for bail pending appeal but the trial judge, Mr Justice U.P. Dery, said they should rather have filed a motion for bail pending trial and that the motion before the court was wrong. Consequently, he asked them to amend the motion and reappear before him on October 18,2011. Only two of the lawyers for the accused persons - Messrs James Agalga and James Abeaduka - were present in court. The accused persons are Fatimatu Abdulai, Denis Adutwum, Yakubu lssaka, Timothy Abolompo, Abubakar Nallah, Peter Ansong, Mutawu Kilu Yahaya Iddi, Jerry John Abbiw, Nana Zamsah Evrah and Eric Darko Akuffo. They are alleged to have committed the offence in Accra between 2009 and 2011 when they abetted various persons to import and export cocaine into and outside the country. They were refused bail by an Accra Circuit Court but their lawyers argued that the refusal to grant them bail amounted to an abuse of their human rights, hence the application at the Human Rights Court. The accused persons were stationed at the national headquarters of NACOB in Accra, while some of them have ever worked or are presently stationed at the Kotoka International Airport. According to the prosecution, during the period 2009 and 2011, the accused persons were supposed to check and arrest passengers who carried narcotic drugs. Sometime in July this year, a narcotic drug suspect who had been on the wanted list of the United States for some time was arrested at Dansoman in Accra. During investigations, he said, text messages purported to have been received from Fatimatu Abdulai, a NACOB operative, were found on the mobile phone of the said suspect. The text messages pointed to the fact that Fatimatu Abdulai of the Procurement Unit of NACOB had, together with other NACOB officials, been aiding and abetting suspect Edward Macauley and others to import and export narcotic drugs through the airport. Fatimatu was immediately arrested and, during interrogation, she admitted the act and mentioned some NACOB officers and personnel of other security agencies, including the other suspects, as having compromised their positions to allow drug couriers a safe passage. That was after they had received various sums of money from the drug dealers. In another development, the Accra Fast Track High Court on Wednesday adjourned proceedings in the procurement case against a former Minister of Information, Mr Stephen Asamoah-Boateng, aka Asabee, and eight others to enable one of the defence lawyers to study a recording of the proceedings and documents tendered in evidence by the prosecution. Mr Augustine Obuor, counsel for two of the accused persons, Kofi Asamoah-Boateng and Dominic Yaw Sampong, who made the request, had prayed the trial judge for a short adjournment to study the more than 100-page document. The case will be heard again on October 19.