The head of the Catholic Bishop Conference has agreed with President John Mahama's call for Ghanaians to show compassion to prisoners except to add that compassion must be balanced with common sense.

Bishop Osei Bonsu does not understand why the government agreed to admit people with links to terrorist group Al qaeda to cool off in Ghana after being detained for 14 years in Cuba's Guantanamo bay.

He said if compassion mattered so much in issues of criminality, then Ghana's prisoners must be released.

Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby are to spend two years in Ghana after they were released from Gitmo.

Their admission into Ghana has raised a huge controversy with key stakeholders in the country kicking against  the decision to bring them into the country.

The Christian Council of Ghana, the Catholic Bishop Conference and other pressure groups condemned government's decision to shelter the two ex-detainees.

But government has been resolute in defence of the decision. The Foreign Minister Hanna Tetteh who issued a statement announcing the arrival of the two detainees told Radio Gold early Tuesday the two were only "footsoldiers" of Al-qaeda and had no potential risk to Ghana.

Minutes after her interview, the president John Mahama told journalists the ex-detainees are "low risk" individuals and did not play any direct operational activities with Al-qaeda.

He said they were captured and unjustifiably detained for 14 years adding as a Christian, it demands that we show compassion to people who needed help.

"I am compassionate. In the bible it teaches us to be compassionate

To what use will Christianity be without showing compassion to the people who needed help most, the president suggested.

But Bishop Osei Bonsu told Joy News' Evans Mensah  the president got it all wrong. Whilst he agreed with him in part that Christians must show compassion, he said that compassion must be shown with common sense.

"My Christian compassion is there and we need to be compassionate for people in need and try to help people but we have to balance compassion with common sense.

"If you know that somebody is a risk to the nation, you can't say that because of compassion we are going to take take him.

"Then We may as well open our prisons and let out all the criminals.

If we have reason to believe that know these people are dangerous we are under no obligation to take that people and show them compassion," he said.

He added it didn't matter whether the two were high or low risk to Ghana. "Risk is risk" he stated adding, Ghana ought not be taking that risk at all.

Citing information from the American government which said none of the Gitmo detainees must step foot in America after their release, Bishop Bonsu said "if America does not want them it means they are dangerous."

He called on the government to return the two ex-detainees to wherever they came from.