Private legal practitioner and former police officer, Alexander Amoako Twum-Barimah has hit hard at the Ghana Police Service and the Ministry for National Security for their role in the arrest of two journalists working with Citi TV/ FM.
Zoe Abu-Baidoo Addo was picked up Tuesday after heavily armed police officers in three Pickup trucks stormed the premises of the Adabraka-based media house. Reports say she was arrested for conspiring with her colleague Caleb Kudah to secretly film the compound of the Ministry of National Security.
Kudah who had already been arrested while filming the premises, as he waited for someone he had gone there to visit, arrived at Citi FM with the armed police personnel around 5 PM Tuesday as the cops pursued Zoe Abu-Baidoo Addo.
Reports indicate Kudah after filming the premises allegedly sent the videos to Zoe who was in the office of the radio station at the time, triggering the invasion of the media house by the armed men.
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Before Tuesday, Kudah had filmed himself at the Independent Square over the weekend where armed police men had paraded to stop the #FixtheCountry protesters from converging there.
Kudah said the police had acted on the whims of the governing NPP, forgetting that their own conditions of service were in bad taste.
“You have converged here to prevent protesters who are hitting the streets to ask the government to fix the mess in the country yet your apartments are in bad state and look like hencoops,” the journalist is seen saying in Akan.
But reacting to the rambo-style invasion of the media outlet, Twum-Barimah condemned the National Security Operatives and the police leadership for the “crass show of power.”
“There is no law that bars Journalists from filming at where he filmed,” the lawyer fumed in an interview with Kwame Minkah on Power FM’s Dwaboase programme.
“I have been a police officer in this country before. Isn’t it true that the police officers sleep in apartments that look like hen coop?” Twum-Barimah quizzed. “Why don’t we like to speak the truth in this country?”
To him, if Kudah was picked up for the video he made at the Independence Square then the state has no right to invite the media to bring their cameras to the premises during national events.
“Why do we bring cameras to the Independent Square on independence day when we have police also at the event?”
To him the government was using the police to stifle people who are bent on putting it on its toes to fix the challenges confronting ordinary Ghanaians including the police force.
Meanwhile, the two journalists have been released after questioning.
Source: Myxyzonline.com