A private legal practitioner, Kingsley Amoako-Boadu, has said that it will be unrealistic for anyone to assume that conditions in Ghana’s prisons could be improved to a level comparable to that of the US.
According to him, such an expectation is farfetched.
“If any court is going to use the conditions of our prisons to deprive anyone from being extradited, we should also look at the context in which Ghana is situated and say that this is the Ghanaian kind of prison. So, you cannot say that you want it, because there are prisons there [in the US] that is one in a room with TV and what not. We cannot say that where Ghana has reached now, we should elevate our prisons to that. So, if we don’t meet that, the person should not be extradited. I think it should be on case-by-case basis,” he said.
Lawyer Amoako-Boadu, who is a member of the Communication Team of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) said this on Saturday, April 20 edition of Key Points on TV3.
His comments were in reaction to an assertion by another private legal practitioner, Martin Kpebu that it is possible for the convicted former Chief Executive Officer of the Microfinance and Small Loans Centre (MASLOC), Sedina Tamakloe to be made to serve the jail term in the US due to Ghana’s poor prison conditions.
Madam Tamakloe was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for causing financial loss of GHC90 million to the state. The former Operations Manager of the organisation, Daniel Axim, who is an accomplice, was also handed a five-years jail term.
The jailing of Madam Tamakloe was done in absentia as she sought permission from the court to travel to the US for medical treatment.
After the ruling, the Deputy Attorney-General, Alfred Tua-Yeboah said the state has commenced procedures to extradite the former MASLOC boss to Ghana to serve the sentence.
“We’ve started the processes and with this judgement, that is going to speed up the process. In Ghana we have various clauses, you can choose to just stay, but so far we have laws regulating how you can be extradited from one country to Ghana if there is a judgement like this one. Rest assured, she would be brought down and face justice,” he explained.
But Speaking on the jailing of Sedina Tamakloe on the Ghana Tonight show on TV3 on Tuesday, April 16 Mr Kpebu said “The main challenge we may face is prison conditions. INTERPOL will do their bit so that they will spread it all over the world, all the police agencies of all the countries in the world asking for her to be extradited to Ghana. But one of the key things we will be facing is the prison conditions in Ghana, because I am aware in the past certain countries have refused to extradite persons to Ghana because of our very inhuman prison conditions, so that is the biggest challenge we will have when it comes to extradition, but a lot of countries do extradite persons back to Ghana.”
Mr Amoako-Boadu also stated that the jail sentence imposed on the former MASLOC Chief Executive Officer of will take effect immediately she arrives in Ghana.
He explained that in so far as she is not available within the jurisdiction of Ghana, the sentence can only commence when she arrives.
“The jail term starts when she arrives in Ghana. Then she wouldn’t have served it. If she takes 20 years, anytime she arrives at any of the ports, it starts,” he said.
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