The Director of the Legon Centre for International Affairs and Diplomacy, Professor Henrietta Mensa-Bonsu, has charged government to prioritize national interest in its handling of the case involving the two Guantanamo detainees.
The Supreme Court on Thursday declared as unconstitutional the hosting of the two detainees in Ghana. Parliament has therefore been asked to place the agreement before Parliament for ratification else the two could be repatriated within three months.
Speaking to on the sidelines of a LECIAD round-table on emerging security threats in the sub region, Professor Mensa-Bonsu said the two Guantanamo detainees should be returned to the United States if Parliament disapproves their stay in the country.
“I have faith in our Parliament. They are the representatives of the people and they will also be given the full information and it is not every information that goes to Parliament that will be on the floor so the Foreign Affairs, the National Security, those committees that deal with those matters will get the full information even if the rest of us will not get it, and I have faith in our representative body that they will do the best for us, and if they say they will not ratify because it is not in the national interest, then we must send them back. Our national interest is a priority. Anything else is just a help, so if our representatives say no , the answer should be no.”
The two Guantanamo bay detainees , Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby, who had been in detention for 14 years, after being linked with terrorist group Al-Qaeda were brought into the country by the Mahama administration.
Two Ghanaian citizens, Margaret Bamful and Henry Nana Boakye, subsequently sued the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, together with the Minister of Interior, accusing then-President John Mahama of illegally bringing in the two former Gitmo detainees, without recourse to the laws of the land.
The plaintiffs were seeking among other reliefs, a “declaration that on a true and proper interpretation of Article 75 of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, the President of the Republic of Ghana acted unconstitutionally by agreeing to the transfer of Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby.”
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)
