Leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, Ernesto Yeboah is still in police custody after being granted GH¢100,000 bail.
According to his lawyer Sammy Darko, “the reason Ernesto although has been granted bail by the court but is still in custody is because by the time the Police finished verifying the sureties and where they lived, the court had closed and so they will have to go back to the court early tomorrow,” he told Citi News in an interview yesterday [June 11, 2020].
He told the court that the bail terms were harsh and excessive because his alleged offence was misdemeanor and that he already has a police enquiry bail. However, the judge declined to revise the bail terms.
He explained, “the law is very settled on how to execute a bail, but I do not know why there is always a problem. When you are granted bail, it is the duty of the registry of that court to determine your sureties, whether they are viable or not. If the court is satisfied with your surety, then the duty of the Police now comes in. The Police are supposed to investigate where you live in the event that if the person jumps surety then the Police can locate such a person and hold you responsible.
“Now when Ernesto was granted bail, our decision was that he should execute the bail bond in court and then the Police can take him away and go and verify all the sureties but the police insisted that they need to take him to the police station and that the sureties must come to the police station for them to go to their individual houses to verify and I am very sure they have been doing that the whole day. And so by the time they were done, the court had closed and so they could not go back to the court to sign. Unfortunately, he has to spend the night [at the police station]”.
On Saturday June 6, Ernesto Yeboah was arrested by security officers at the independence square for a vigil held in honour of George Floyd.
He was charged with failure to notify the police of a special event contrary to the Public Order Act, 1994 (Act 491) section 1(1).
Source: GhanaFeed.com
