US provided $300k for Gitmo 2 upkeep - Loh

The United States (US) gave the Ghana government an amount of US$300,000 to cater for the two ex-Guantanamo Bay inmates being housed in the country for two years, Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby, George Loh, a former Vice Chairperson on parliament's Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee, has revealed.

The former MP for North Dayi, who was a guest on Citi FM’s The Big Issue, explained that the stay of the two in Ghana does not incur any monetary cost to the Ghanaian government as the US is providing for their upkeep as well as security surveillance.

This comes in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling which declared as unconstitutional, the decision for former President John Mahama to have allowed the US to bring two former Guantanamo Bay detainees to Ghana.

A seven-member panel chaired by Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo reached the ruling by a 6-1 majority, with only Justice William Atuguba dissenting on Thursday June 22.

It would be recalled that two plaintiffs, Margaret Bamful and Henry Nana Boakye, sued the Attorney General and Minister of Justice as well as the Minister of the Interior in 2016, accusing government of illegally bringing in the two former Gitmo detainees without recourse to the laws of the land.

The two plaintiffs, therefore, sought a true and proper interpretation of Article 75 of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana arguing that Mr Mahama as President acted unconstitutionally by agreeing to the transfer of the two without recourse to Parliament.

Mr Loh explained that it is now the duty of the Attorney General to draft a document to parliament to ratify the president’s decision or otherwise.