The suspects
An Accra High Court has admitted into evidence a hard drive containing audios and videos which captured some of the ten accused persons in an alleged plan to overthrow the government.
The secretly recorded videos and audios forms crucial part of the prosecution case against the then accused persons who are facing charges of high treason and abetment of high treason.
Lawyers for the accused persons had objected to moves by the prosecution to tender the video through their third witness, Staff Sergeant Awarf Kojo Sule who did the recordings.
They also argued about the authenticity of the video, using the time stamp of 2013 which appears on the videos as basis while also suggesting that the videos were edited and manipulated.
But a three member panel of the court presided over by Justice Afia Serwaa Asare-Botwe and assisted by Justices Hafisata Amaleboba and Anthony Oppong admitted the videos into evidence on grounds that they are relevant to the trial.
The court in its ruling divided the arguments into segments of relevance, authenticity, human rights, originality and proper custody of the tapes and the hard drive.
On the issue of relevance, the court in its short ruling referred to section 51 of the Evidence Act and held that the evidence on the hard drive are relevant to the determination case since the prosecution’s previous two witnesses all made mention of the existence of the evidence.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak