Some lawyers at BNI, Nat’l Security behave as if they’ve forgotten the law – Anyenini

Private legal practitioner, Mr Samson Lardi Anyenini, has indicated that the conduct of some lawyers at the National Security Secretariat and the Bureau of National Investigation (BNI) portrays them as people who have forgotten the law they were taught in school.

Mr Anyenini complained that on several occasions, the suspects have been kept at the BNI or National Security Secretariat beyond the 48-hour stipulated time permitted by law.

Mr Anyenini, who is also a journalist, told Paul Adom-Otchere on Metro TV’s Good Evening Ghana programme on Thursday, 4 July 2019 in relation to the arrest and detention of the Deputy Editor of ModernGhana, Mr Emmanuel Ajarfor Abugri and reporter Emmanuel Britwum by the office of national security for alleged hacking and cybercrime.

Mr Ajarfor, after his release, claimed he was tortured by the security operatives but the National Security has refuted the claim.

Mr Lardi Anyenini, who is the lawyer for Mr Ajarfor, said: “I have been in this business and also going to National Security places, going to BNI in the last almost 10 years.

“I will be the most naïve practitioner to say that excesses do not happen within these security systems. You will go there and meet your colleagues you sat in law school with and they conduct themselves as if they have forgotten all the laws that they were taught about due process, so, these things do happen.

“There was a time that Kissi Agyabeng and I went to have access to a client at the BNI but the attitude was terrible and it was a lawyer who was the head of the BNI.

“We came to the conclusion that we needed to complain to the Attorney General to call them to order about what they were doing.

“They had detained this client over the period allowed by law and had actually done things to them.”