Court orders Yemenis charged with entering Ghana with fake visas to open defence
Three out the four the Yemenis alleged to have travelled to Ghana with fake Emergency Entry Visas and French Passports have been ordered to open their defence.
This was after an Accra Circuit Court had ruled that they had a case to answer.
The accused are Esmail Yahya Zeyad aka Evra Allerson, Gaafar Eissa Yahya Amer, aka Ciro Carlos, Waleed Ahmed Yahya aka Debuchya Allard, all students.
The Court presided over by Mr Aboagye Tandoh, however, ordered the Police to hand over Eissa Yahya Amer, a businessman to the Director of the Ghana Immigration Service for appropriate action to be taken
The Court acquitted and discharged Amer on the charges levelled against him.
The four through their counsel, Mr Dominic Owusu Sekyere, had filed a submission of no case after prosecution had closed its case.
They argued that the prosecution had failed to make a case against them after calling its witnesses.
According to counsel, prosecution also failed to establish the essential ingredients in the charges of possession of forged documents, fake Emergency Entry Visas, and the forgery of official documents.
Mr Sekyere contended that in the case of Amer, the businessman, he was holding a genuine passport and he was going to apply for entry visa in Ghana.
According to counsel, the act of applying for an entry visa was allowed under the laws of Ghana and the phenomenon was also accepted around the globe.
In the case of the other three, counsel said the officials of the Ghana Immigration Service had the right to have sent them back to their country on any available flight after their checks.
The four Yemenis had denied the charges of possessing forged documents, fake Emergency Entry Visas, and forgery of official documents.
The four, who spoke through an Arabic interpreter, have been remanded into lawful custody by the Court.
Soon after the ruling on the submission of no case, defence counsel prayed for bail for the accused persons.
The Court urged defence counsel to file a formal application for bail.
Prosecution said all the accused persons were Yemeni nationals who arrived at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) on board Ethiopian Airline Flight ET 920, on November 24, last year.
According to the prosecution, while undergoing immigration procedures, Esmail, Gaafar and Waleed were found with French passports with different names.
The prosecution said a further search on them revealed that all the accused persons had Yemeni passports too, and when the French passports with different names were examined, they were found to be fake.
According to the prosecution, when the accused persons were quizzed they claimed one Abdulai Mohammed, an individual based in Yemen, secured the French passports for them.
The prosecutor said they claimed the same person gave them a phone number to call a certain Mohammed on their arrival in Ghana.
The prosecution said the accused persons were on transit in Ghana to France, then to Istanbul, Turkey.
The prosecution said another examination of their Yemeni passports indicated that Esmail and Gaafar had travelled several times to Djibouti before their trip to Ghana.
Source: GNA