Montie 3 missing at Supreme Court; case adjourned to March 28

The Supreme Court (SC) yesterday adjourned to March 28, 2018 the matter in which three separate persons have filed a suit challenging the constitutionality of former President Dramani Mahama granting amnesty to the Montie 3.

This was after lawyers in the case failed to agree on the memorandum of issues that would allow the justices to deal with the matter after it was consolidated by the apex court.

At the court yesterday, the radio panellists Alistair Nelson, Godwin Ako Gunn and Salifu Maase, aka Mugabe, the host of ‚Pampaso‘, a political show on the then Montie FM , were all absent from court.

It was the view of the seven-member panel presided over by Justice Sophia Adenyira that the issues brought it by the individual people are identical and that the parties should also file their agreed memorandum of issues.

The various plaintiffs were seeking an interpretation of Article 72 of the 1992 Constitution, a reason the court finds expedient to consolidate the cases.

The applicants, Nana Asante Bediatuo, Elekplem Agbameva and Alfred Tuah Yeboah, had filed the suit at the apex court challenging the rightfulness of ex-president Mahama to free the three persons.

On January 12, this year, Justice Yaw Apau, a sole judge who sat over the case, revealed that there were three different suits challenging the constitutionality of the former president’s decision.

The Attorney General (AG), represented by Grace Oppong, Principal State Attorney, entered appearance and the court gave the AG seven days to file its statement of case in response to the matter.

The plot

It would be recalled that the apex court, in July 2016, Maase, and two other panellists threatened the judges with death. They were held for contempt and sentenced to four months each in prison.

The five-member panel chaired by Justice Sophia Akuffo, now the Chief Justice, had also ordered Maase and the other contemnors – Godwin Ako Gunn, 39, and Alistair Tairo Nelson, 41, both National Democratic Congress (NDC) activists, to pay a GH¢10,000 fine each or in default serve another one month in jail.

Maase had told his panellists to ‘open fire on the justices’ by way of attacking them with threats of death in addition to allowing a certain Nash of Mataheko in Accra to “marry” the then Chief Justice Georgina Theodora Wood.

In the case of Nana Badiatuo, the Plaintiffs, amongst other reliefs, are seeking a declaration that the then president Mahama’s action was unconstitutional and also a further order to have the Montie 3 serve their sentences in full.