The Member of Parliament (MP) for Abuakwa South, Samuel Atta Akyea, has said the controversy arising from the arrest, prosecution, and subsequent deportation of the three South African ex-cops was a grand plan to rebrand opposition leader Nana Akufo-Addo as a violent character.

The lawmaker expressed amazement that after some government officials had labelled the three men as “mercenaries” and “terrorists”, who had been brought into the country to prosecute the opposition NPP’s violent agenda ahead of the 2016 elections, they were only slapped with misdemeanour charges before the state filed an application to withdraw the case.

“…That is what I keep saying that this whole melodrama was political, to tag Akufo-Addo as a man with violent propensities, to feed the NDC propaganda machinery with raw data and material that: ‘Let’s tag him again; we are close to elections,” Mr Akyea told Samson Lardy Anyenini on Multi TV’s Newsfile programme Saturday April 2, adding: “…If that is not the aim, I am telling you the truth, the whole arrangement is bizarre”.

Mr Akyea also stated that the decision of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) to keep the accused persons in their custody even after the court had granted them bail “undermined the rule of law”, while Ghana’s “international image as a constitutionally arranged democracy has been insulted”.

“…Mercenaries have walked into your fold and then you charge them in a court of competent jurisdiction and you let them off? I do not see how any serious security apparatus will go that low,” wondered the MP, who served as one of the lawyers for the three South Africans.

The three ex-police officers – Major Ahmed Shaik Hazis (rtd), 54; Warrant Officer Denver Dwayhe, 33, and Captain Mlungiseli Jokani, 45, were arrested at Agona Duakwa in the Central region by the BNI for training some bodyguards belonging to the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

They pleaded not guilty in an Accra Circuit Court to charges of unlawful training and false declaration.

The three men, however, had their visas revoked and were sent back to their country on Tuesday March 29, 2016. The Attorney General has also written to the trial court to serve notice of the state’s desire to discontinue the case.