Volta Secessionists Case Adjourned To May 12

A Ho High Court presided over by Justice Nicholas Charles Agbevor has adjourned the treason case involving leaders of the Homeland Study Group Foundation, a secessionist group in the Volta Region to May 12.

     The adjournment was upon the request of the prosecution to give ample time to the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General to study the docket.

       Mr Simon Adatsi, who represented the State said the docket had been forwarded to the headquarters of the Criminal Investigations Department and prayed the court for four weeks for the  attorney-General to study the case.

       Mr Atsu Agbakpey, Counsel for the accused persons said the adjournment was vindication of his position that the prosecution had no case.

       He said the delay meant only one thing, “intimidation, abuse of human rights, and highhandedness, which must not be tolerated in democratic Ghana.”

       Justice Agbevor in adjourning the case said the accused persons were only arrested on March 6th and that one month was not enough to complete investigations in such matters.

         He said delays in trials were not necessarily to punish accused persons and asked the parties to keep tempers cool.

        Leaders of the secessionist group; Kormi Kudzordzi, Martin Asiana Agbenu and Divine Odonkor were on March 9, granted bail of GH¢50,000 with two sureties each by the court after they were arrested and charged with treason felony.

       The three, with four others at large allegedly held a press conference on February 26, this year, in Ho chaired by Kudzordzi who claimed that Western Togoland sovereignty was non-negotiable and that Ghana’s hold on Togoland was illegal and must be denounced and decoupled immediately.

     The Group allegedly threatened that people who had patience to go in the direction of due process was gradually reducing and being replaced by those who thought the slow process was not acceptable to them and wanted it in a radical form and that the time for the radicals to act was now.

     The court heard that the Group had planned to declare independence of the Western Togoland by May 9, and printed “T” shirts with a delimited Ghana map with the eastern portion marked, “State of Western Togoland.”