Accra, July 21, GNA - Eben Quarcoo, former editor of the Free Press, told a circuit tribunal in Accra on Wednesday that a publication he made in 1996 that the government was dealing in cocaine was without malice.

Rather, he said, the publication was a "social and moral assessment" of the government and of public interest.

Quarcoo said this when he was being cross-examined by Mr Martin Amidu, Deputy Attorney-General, in a case in which he is charged with making a publication likely to injure the reputation of the country. With him in the dock is Nana Kofi Coomson, publisher of the Ghanaian Chronicle, who is charged with the same offence.

The accused persons, who have pleaded not guilty, published in their papers that the government was dealing in cocaine and was using the proceeds to purchase arms and ammunition to destabilise the country if it lost the 1996 general elections.

Quarcoo said the story was taken from the African Observer, a New York-based weekly edited by a Ghanaian. In his evidence-in-chief, he mentioned the Guide, a weekly newspaper, as one of his sources of information for the publication.

He agreed to a suggestion that his other sources of information, which he mentioned in his evidence-in-chief, were made known to his counsel after he had been charged.

Quarcoo again agreed with the prosecution that those sources of information were not mentioned in the publication, as he did in the case of the African Observer. Hearing continues on Thursday, July 22.