The Office of the Special Prosecutor has declared the former Secretary of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on illegal mining, Charles Bissue wanted after several attempts to get him to assist in an ongoing investigations prove futile.
Mr. Bissue is being investigated for his role in a suspected corruption and corruption-related offences relating to illegal mining.
On May 3, the Office of the Special Prosecutor wrote to Mr. Bissue informing him that he was a necessary person for the investigation into the activities of the IMCIM, and was asked to appear on May 22.
But the lawyer for Mr. Bissue, the former Secretary of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on illegal mining, says despite the issuance of a court order for his client’s arrest, he will not be turning himself in.
The legal practitioner, Nana Agyei Baffour Awuah said this is not because his client is on the run but because the arrest warrant was improperly secured.
He explained that if the court was privy to all the information including complaints of human rights abuse of Mr Bissue by the Special Prosecutor, the court order for his client’s arrest would not have been given.
“The arrest warrant would have been secured ex parte, which is without notice to Charles Bissue. So the court would have acted based solely on information the Special Prosecutor gave to it. The court made that order without being fed with the global evidence in this matter, and granted the arrest order without properly exercising its discretion not through its fault,” Mr Awuah said.
‘If the court was privy to certain facts including but not limited to pending suits and motions for interlocutory injunctions, it would not have granted or made an order for that arrest,”
Mr Awuah said that it is seemingly suspicious that the Special Prosecutor is in a hurry when there are about three pending suits against him.
“Why can’t he allow the processes to run their course? Is it because he has got scores to settle? There is another suit in our human rights court by Charles Bissue where he complains of warrant and breach of his fundamental human rights. When the Special Prosecutor went to secure that, warrant I am sure he didn’t disclose all these facts.”
The Lawyer stated that he and his team are also working on the way forward saying “we are going to take steps.”
