The
Director of the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO), Biadela
Mortey Akpadzi, has responded appropriately to concerns expressed over
his outfit's detention of those implicated in the Ghana Youth Employment
& Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA) report.
Reacting
to an earlier publication in the Chronicle newspaper that an
Accra-based Legal Practitioner, George Tetteh, had challenged the
authority of the EOCO to have detained several individuals indicted in
the report, Mr. Mortey Akpadzi defended his outfit, stressing that the
EOCO is vested with the authority to arrest and detain culprits.
The
concerns of the Legal Practitioner came on the heels of what he
described as "abusive treatment meted out to some of his clients from
the Ashanti Region, who were implicated in the recent Ministerial
Committee report on the Ghana Youth Employment & Entrepreneurial
Development Agency (GYEEDA)."
He was "worried about the nature of
the operations of EOCO, which according to him, appears to dehumanize
and curtail the freedom of persons invited before them.
"According
to him, there was lack of clarity in the mode of operations of the unit
as persons summoned before it are subjected to emotional trauma and
infringement of their human rights, including arrest and detention," as
published in the Wednesday's edition of the Chronicle.
The
individuals invited by the office since the investigations began were
reported to have been allegedly detained and made to provide sureties
before their release.
But speaking in an interview with Radio
Gold, the EOCO Boss believed it lay in their bosom to ensure that they
apprehend any person indicted by the report.
According to him,
the EOCO has "full powers of arrest and detention for not more than 48
hours and subsequently presenting the one to court if need be. As much
as possible, we arrest and grant bail…”
He however disclosed that
the indicted persons were also put on bail in accordance with the Act
governing the activities of EOCO.
This, he said, was done in a combined effort with the Ghana Police Service. |
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