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Anas premieres judicial bribery scandal video today

Titled ‘Ghana in the Eyes of God – Epic of Injustice’, the piece of investigative work is scheduled to be premiered at the Accra International Conference Centre on two days - September 22 and 23, 2015.

Disguised Anas at the court premises last Friday

Barring any last minute hitches, an investigative piece by Anas Aremeyaw Anas and his Tiger Eye which captured 34 judges allegedly negotiating with agents including court clerks and police prosecutors to free suspects in robbery and murder cases on video will be premiered today.

For the past few days, pressure has mounted on Anas to halt the planned premiering of a damaging video.

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One of the indicted judges, Justice Paul Uuter Dery, after suing the producers of the video, has filed another suit to stop the premiering of the video at the Accra International Conference Centre.

The suit is against the Director of Estates and General Services at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Chief Director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Manager of the Accra International Conference Centre and the Attorney General.

Lawyer of the indicted justices has stated that the video was concocted. Charles Kwesi Bentum argues that the video evidence lacks coherence and does not provide enough basis for charging the judges with bribery.

“We believe this video is concocted, we believe so because what is being seen cannot be a fair representation of the facts that are being alleged,”he said on Citi FM’s The Big Issue.

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Lawyer for four of the implicated staff of the Judicial Service, Egbert Faibille after watching the video with his client asked for the public screening of it to be stopped until some important changes are made. He has again argued that screening the video will be prejudicial.

“We went to watch the movie… From what I have seen, certain considerations ought to be recognized in portions of what took place behind or around them which had been taken off. The video should not be a conclusive basis for finding anybody guilty until due process is followed. There are certain sensibilities… At least I saw one child in the video. Are you going to show a child to the world because a parent was engaged in some discussions with somebody? We are talking about permanent records and I think that the frenzy should come down,” he told Starr News.

Meanwhile, some prominent individuals and pressure groups have said that premiering the video is not misplaced. They have wondered how the implicated judges will be able to justify why theirs should not be shown when previous videos that have emerged through Anas’ investigations have been made public.

“If in the past, all the other people who have come under scrutiny or come under the spotlight of Anas have had their videos shown, how do you justify a position that if it concerns judges, it must not be shown?” vice president of policy think tank, IMANI Ghana, Kofi Bentil has argued.

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“…it is an indictment on the tiger team if all except one of their painstaking investigations is not made available to the public. Historically, the public have been previewed to all their findings with respect to previous investigations,” Pressure group – Alliance for Accountable Governance (AFAG) has indicated.

Editor-in-chief of the Crusading Guide Newspaper, Kweku Baakohas also said that any attempt to stop the airing of the video is an "exercise in futility".

"Can anybody place an injunction on the sky? We are in the world of technology… Can any court stop people from seeing something in the sky? Can anybody injunct the international media when it is not emanating from the person you are litigating against? "It is an exercise in futility," he told Joy News.

Already, some people have had their free tickets to the premiere. It is scheduled to be shown twice on the aforementioned days.

Anas Aremeyaw Anas' investigative pieces over the years have captured on video how some security agencies aided people to smuggle cocoa outside the borders of the country, how inmates at the orphanage in Bawjiase were maltreated and the home being turned into a business venture by its founder; bad management practices, food theft, drugs trafficking and drugs sales from the Accra Psychiatric Hospital among others.

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