The Magistrate sitting at District Court eight (8) and responsible for the adjudication of the committal proceedings of the embattled Chief Executive Officer of the Obengfo Hospital, her Worship, Efua Sackey today ordered the seizure of mobile phones belonging to Journalists who were in court to report on the matter.
The Magistrate, before the court hearing, ordered her Court Warrant Officer (CWO) to seize the phones of all journalists in her court before she will hear the case.
She instructed that her action is to prevent the Journalists from recording proceedings. Since the commencement of the Obengfo case, Magistrate Sackey has consistently had issues with and openly expressed her dislike for the presence of journalists in her court.
At the last court sitting before today’s hearing, the Magistrate ordered journalists to report to the registrar of her court to seek clearance before accessing her court.
Court correspondents for the Publisher Newspaper, Jeffrey De-Graft Johnson, Accra FM’s, Ama Brako Ampofo, Ghanaian Times, Malik Suleiman, and EIB Network, Wilberforce Asare had their phones detained by the CWO for nearly an hour.
After the court sitting, the Journalists who were affected by the decision of Magistrate expressed their disgust about the orders of the court indicating that her decision and subsequent orders are completely alien to their experiences in courts particularly, the higher courts of Judicature such as the High Court, Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court.
In the Substantive case, Police prosecutors today told the Magistrate that they have obtained a full medical report on the accused person and submitted same to the court. They further told the court that they are continuing with their investigations into the circumstances that led to the death of the former National Entrepreneurship Innovation Programme (NEIP), Stacy Offei Darko, at the Obengfo hospital and the role the suspect played in the whole incident. The court subsequently adjourned the case to the 3rd of July 2018 for hearing.
Source: Ghana/Starrfmonline.com/103.5FM/Wilberforce Asare
