The Continued Political Witch-Hunt Against Ken Ofori-Atta In The Media Is Nauseating

Ken Ofori-Atta has demonstrated beyond any doubt within the INTERPOL Red Notice and the United States Immigration application procedures that he is not a fugitive from Ghanaian justice, but a politically prosecuted former political public office holder being denied the due process of law under the 1992 Constitution of Ghana. This is why the continued political witch-hunt against Ken Ofori-Atta by the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) and the

Government of Ghana through sections of the rented Ghanaian media any time he prevailed in defending his rights under the INTERPOL and the US Immigration laws is nauseating and shameful.

The Government came into office targeting Ken Ofori-Atta for political persecution in the court of public opinion to set the tone for the criminalization of the entire New Patriotic Party (NPP) government of former President Nana Akufo-Addo as part of its short game towards the 7 December 2028 elections. The government was copying again from the playbook of the Kufuor, Mills/Mahama, and Akufo-Addo governments’ modus operandi against predecessor governments. The use of the dragnet fishing approach of criminalizing all previous political public office holders until they each can exonerate themselves of having committed any potential crimes while in office constitutes an abuse of constitutional power.

I went through this type of inhuman and cruel treatment at the hands of the late Mr Justice Amua-Sekyi’s inquisitorial National Reconciliation Commission in 2004 for abuse of power in a matter I was never involved in at enormous personal expense only to be reluctantly exonerated by the Commission for want of evidence. I became a target in vengeance for my having constituted an impeachment committee to investigate Mr. Justice Amua-Sekyi for misconduct under Article 146. The NDC government, against my advice, that when one wounds a snake, one must decapitate it to prevent a future bite from it, wrongfully accepted his resignation from the Supreme Court, and paid the price at the Commission’s hearings.

Ken Ofori-Atta must be an idiot if after advise from his lawyers, both national and international, he voluntarily returned to Ghana to subject himself to investigation and possible prosecution after the government machinery was used at taxpayers’ expense to mount a consistent trial in the court of public opinion (instead of in a court of law) of alleged suspected corruption and corruption-related offences against him. The case of Diezani Alison-Madueke who got justice in the United Kingdom not Nigeria is a guide.

The provisions of the 1992 Constitution on the fundamental human rights and freedoms guarantees to everybody in Ghana expansive rights and freedoms to life, liberty, human dignity, equality and freedom from discrimination, protection of home and property, fair trial, and the general fundamental freedoms. Ordinary citizens and public office holders of whatever rank are equally guaranteed these rights and freedoms when it comes to investigation and prosecution for crime. The Constitution treats crime as crime for everybody: it prohibits political crime for public office holders and crime for other citizens.

The Government, using the OSP, exhibited an intention to violate all the fundamental rights and freedoms as they applied to Ken Ofori-Atta for the simple reason that he was the Minister of Finance in the preceding government whom the government suspected of having committed a number of corruption and corruption-related offences, and other criminal offences during his tenure. The Government had notice that Mr. Ofori-Atta was abroad for medical treatment for what turned out to be prostate cancer. Notwithstanding this awareness, the government by letter dated 24 January 2026 demanded his presence in Ghana at the OSP for investigations for corruption offences. Meanwhile the OSP had not pursued a full investigation into the OSP’s own anti-corruption Agyapa Royalty Transaction Report dated 15 October 2020 implicating Mr. Ofori-Atta while he was in the country.

Ken Ofori-Atta voluntarily offered to return to Ghana after his medical treatment abroad. Nonetheless, his home was vandalized in a search in his absence by the national security apparatus of the government with the CCTV in his home capturing the inhuman and degrading nature of the searches and seizures which became available for public viewing on the internet. He was declared as a fugitive from justice and an unlawful application for his arrest abroad succeeded in being posted on the INTERPOL Red Notice website.

In my first article on the abuse of the investigatory process in demonizing Mr. Ofori-Atta in the court of public opinion instead of in a court of law, I bemoaned the unlawfulness of the government using the inquisitorial and persecutorial approach adopted. I stated and warned as follows:

“Ken Ofori-Atta voluntarily offered to return to Ghana after his medical treatment abroad.

Any responsible law enforcement agency with in-depth knowledge of security and intelligence would have continued to cajole him to return to the country after his treatment abroad instead of humiliating him and bringing his reputation into disrepute internationally,.... The OSP has now provided legitimate and justifiable reasons for Ken Ofori-Atta to sit out his persecution in the US to preserve his health, contest the Red Notice, and fight extradition as long as Kissi Agyebeng remains the SP.”

It happened that Ken Ofori-Atta won his challenge to the unlawful application and the issuance of an INTERPOL Red Notice against him as part of the agenda to damage his reputation internationally without due process of law. This unlawful INTERPOL Red Notice provided the government the opportunity to convict Ken Ofori-Atta in the court of public opinion of having committed the offences listed in the Red Notice.

When Mr. Ofori-Atta and his lawyers won the challenge to his being listed on the INTERPOL Red Notice, it provided another opportunity for the government and its supporters to continue his political persecution in the court of public opinion. The OSP subsequently filed charges against him and others in the High Court, Accra, for various corruption offences.

When Ken Ofori-Atta’s US visa was revoked and he was arrested by the US Home Office Immigration authorities, the Government used it as an opportunity once more to ingrain in the public mind through the media, his guilt with promises from the Attorney-General that he might soon be deported to Ghana.

Ken Ofori-Atta came to symbolize the political propaganda that the entire NPP government of Nana Akufo-Addo was a criminal enterprise looting the public purse with wanton abandon even when no court of law had found him or the government, he served guilty of any offence.

Each time Mr. Ofori-Atta appeared before the US Immigration court for the hearing of an application for the adjustment of his immigration status for the grant of permanent residence and the hearing was adjourned, the government of Ghana and its supporters used the occasion for his continued trial in the court of public opinion.

In a Press Release dated 16 June 2026 Ken Ofori-Atta’s lawyers notified the public that:

“Ken Ofori-Atta’s Green card 1-485 petition has been granted by the US Immigration Court. The court heard evidence relating to actions taken by Ghana’s Office of the Special Prosecutor. The Court finds the criminal charges in Ghana not credible. However, the court ruling was made within the context of a United States immigration proceedings. The court’s decision was focused on whether Mr Ofori-Atta met the legal requirement for adjustment of status.”

In the interim, the Government of Ghana, as the only Defendant, had supported a suit in the Supreme Court for a declaration that the Office of the Special Prosecutor Act, 2017 (Act 959) violated the powers of the Attorney-General under Article 88 of the Constitution and was, therefore, unconstitutional. A High Court had also without authority declared Act 959 unconstitutional. The Supreme Court action is still pending. The consequences of the position of the Government disclosed by its Statement of the Defendant’s Case in the pending Supreme Court and its effect on the US Immigration Court case should have been obvious to any reasonable person.

Mr. Ofori-Atta’s inevitable success in obtaining a favourable decision granting him permanent residence status in the US Immigration Court and his consequent release from custody as an illegal immigrant subject to deportation was definitely a slap in the face of the Government of Ghana’s efforts to have him deported to Ghana.

The organized government propaganda machinery to demonize Ken Ofori-Atta in the court of public opinion in Ghana was again set in motion not only against him and his family, but also against the entire NPP. Civil Society Organization activists who yesterday were staunch supporters and defenders of the NPP government were at pains to outdo each other with placing the responsibility for Ken Ofori-Atta’s return to Ghana on the NPP and his family. As one of them stated it: “It is imperative that the leadership of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) immediately call on the diplomatic community, ... to urged the relevant US authorities to extradite... Ofori-Atta back to Ghana.” The false assumption being that the NPP is responsible for the natural and probable consequences of any actions of Ken Ofori-Atta for the commission of any crime under the laws of Ghana. Another activist was reported by the media to have trumpeted to high heavens that:

“He [Mr. Ofori-Atta] will do himself and his whole family some good by subjecting himself accountability and purging himself of all the things accusations around his governance and his time in office. He may be exiting it nice lot by using legal tactics to leave but this is not public service in any shape or form and characters like this should never come close to public office again, they will run away.”

A third activist ignored the genesis and context of the persecution of Mr. Ofori-Atta in the court of public opinion even before he could be charged with any offence to ask the question: “Can any single person say that Ken Ofori-Atta would not have gotten bail, if he had stayed?” The simple answer is that the OSP had failed to investigate Mr. Ofori-Atta for any offence before he went abroad for medicals and with hindsight from the abuse of the bail process and the due process of law requirements since 7 January 2026, he might have died of his medical condition if he was not abroad, bail, fair trial, or not. Think of Alison-Madueke!

The 1992 Constitution of Ghana does not mandate citizens to commit suicide when it becomes notoriously obvious that their fundamental human rights and freedoms are being or will be violated by the government weaponizing law enforcement and the process of criminal justice administration to try them in the court of public opinion. The Constitution acknowledges that trials in the court of public opinion create pervasive bias in the minds of the judges against suspects, thereby denying them of a fair trial in the courts of law.

The late Victor Selormey of the NDC whom I had the privilege of meeting as his lawyer at the behest of former President Rawlings upon his arrival and arrest by the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) on 15 April 2001 under

pressure from the NDC, was given an expedited trial, convicted and sentenced on 6

December 2001 to eight years imprisonment. Mr. Kufour sarcastically pardoned him on 3 March 2005 (during the pendency of another criminal trial) when it was obvious he was

about to die from a pre-existing heart condition known before his initially arrest. He died on 18 April 2005. Adamu Dramani Sakande of the NPP was also pardoned for an electoral

offence by the NDC government on grounds of ill-health only to die shortly thereafter.

One cannot escape the preponderance of cogent and credible evidence pointing to the unavoidable conclusion that the modus operandi of each succeeding government since 7 January 2001 has been to weaponize the law enforcement and criminal justice system as a political tool for demonizing its adversaries as criminals for the purpose of the next elections.

How does one, otherwise, explain the pardons granted to convicted political opponents any time the incumbent government loses the elections to its opposing adversary?

The Akufo-Addo government became an exception by setting a trap for its successor NDC government which fell into the trap by interfering with on-going trials via discontinuing pending prosecutions in the courts against its supporters and thereafter appointed some of them to high public office. The bottom of any pretence to really fight corruption was gone. .

My earnest wish is that President John Mahama will use his last tenure in office to truly treat crime as crime and not as an instrument of political propaganda against leading adversaries to gain votes for the NDC at the 2028 elections. The continued political witch hunting against Ken Ofori-Atta organized by the government propaganda machinery is not only nauseating to reasonable people cognisant of the facts but does not help the cause of the NDC which suffered a similar fate at the hands of the Kufour and Akufo-Addo governments. Martin A. B. K. Amidu - 25 June 2026

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