HELP INTEGRATE THESE RELEASED PRISONERS (NOV 24, 2010)

The Centre for Human Rights and Civil Liberties (CHURCIL), a non-governmental organisation fighting for the release of 160 remand prisoners, through a motion at the High Court in Accra, has managed to secure the freedom of 82 remand prisoners from the Nsawam Medium Security Prison.
The prisoners, whose cases have not been heard since their long incarceration, were released under the Justice for All programme.
The programme, which is meant to grant the release of prisoners under incarceration between 1993 and 2005, forms part of a series of measures institutionalised by the Judicial Service to decongest prisons in the country.
According to CHURCIL, it filed the motion at the High Court to secure the release of those whose warrants of arrest had expired and whose dockets could not be traced, pointing out that that action was in compliance with Article 14, Section 4 of the 1992 Constitution.
It is self-evident that one is not guilty of a crime until it is proved in a law court that he or she is guilty beyond all reasonable doubt, after which he or she is convicted of the crime and either incarcerated or fined.
The 1992 Constitution states categorically, “Where a person arrested, restricted or detained under Paragraph 4 or 13 of Article 14 is not tried within reasonable time, then without prejudice to any further proceedings that may be brought against him, he should be released unconditionally or upon reasonable conditions, including in particular conditions reasonably necessary to ensure that he appears at a later date for trial or proceedings preliminary to trial.”
It is based on this constitutional provision that we agree with CHURCIL that those remanded and whose cases have not been heard but have been incarcerated for too long a time should be released.
We are of the belief that detaining suspects without trying them is a clear violation of their fundamental human rights.
These remand prisoners are invariably forgotten when they are thrown into prison and in one instance a remand prisoner was reported to have been incarcerated for 30 years or so.
The CHURCIL has done well in fighting for the interest of those remand prisoners. However, we caution that those released do not revert to their bad ways to infringe on the civil liberties of law-abiding citizens of this country.
The released remand prisoners should be made to sign bonds to be of good behaviour for at least three years.
They should also be monitored strictly by the security agencies and other social service organisations and be helped, through skill training, so that they can be reintegrated into society.
It is the belief of CHURCIL that some of these remand prisoners were innocent individuals who got caught during police swoops and dumped in the prisons without the due process.
We want to call on the police that during these swoops to smoke out criminals, they should carry out due diligence to separate the criminals from the innocent ones and also follow due process to avoid sending innocent people into custody.