An Accra high court, presided over by Justice Kofi Dorgu, has granted Rabih Haddad bail in the sum of GH¢500,000 with two sureties.
Haddad, a Lebanese, has been accused of raping his 19-year-old house help.
As part of the bail terms, one of the sureties must be a Ghanaian who is gainfully employed and has a fixed place of abode.
The sureties are also to submit a passport-size photograph to the court’s registrar while the Ghanaian surety is to be justified.
Again, the accused person has been ordered to submit his passport to the court’s registrar and seek the court’s permission whenever he wishes to travel outside the court’s jurisdiction.
Haddad has been in custody since December last year when he was arrested and his lawyer, Ralph Poku Adusei, had been praying the court to grant him bail.
He initially made an oral application for bail at an Accra Central District Court but that was not granted because the court did not have jurisdiction over the case, and he subsequently filed an application for bail at the high court.
In his application, Mr Ralph Poku-Adusei averred that the fundamental human rights of the accused person were being infringed upon.
He maintained that his client was suffering from cardiac cell damage – a heart condition which he said would not allow him to be confined.
According to him, if the court denied the accused person bail, it (court) risked trying a dead man.
His lawyer has been telling the court that the prosecution was not certain why the police arrested him.
He said the facts of the case as presented by the prosecution do not match the charges proffered against his client and prayed the court to grant him bail.
The application was however, strongly opposed by the Attorney General’s Office, which held that the suspect did not have a fixed place of abode and could interfere with police investigation, if granted bail.
Justice Dorgu, in his ruling on the bail application, held that a victim who claimed to be raped on two occasions could not tell the police at the first instance when she was taken to the police station.
He said the accused was arrested on November 30, 2017 for assault, was granted bail and was again arrested on December 2, 2017 for rape, but the prosecution ignored the initial charge of assault and were looking for evidence to support the charge of rape and could not tell when that evidence would be made available.
He also held that the prosecution, although claimed that the accused does not have a fixed place of abode, could not say for sure that he and his family were leaving on the street.
Justice Dorgu therefore granted the accused person bail – paving the way for committal proceedings to continue at the magistrate court for a possible trial.
Meanwhile, the DNA test on the 19-year-old lady had shown that there was no sperm on the victim.
Although an earlier Police Hospital report dated December 3, 2017 indicated that sperm was found on the girl, DAILY GUIDE has gathered that the result of the forensic DNA test indicates that no sperm was found on the victim (name withheld), sharply contradicting the earlier Police Hospital report.
According to the DNA report titled, ‘The Republic Vrs Rabih Haddad’, Lab No. DNA 66/17, “The virginal swab cuts reacted negatively to the test of human semen” and that “based on the DNA analysis, the suspect Rabih Haddad can be excluded as a contributor to the DNA profile obtained from the Exhibit”.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak