The voice you labelled as a female’s is conjecture – Defense Counsel to witness
Mr Lamtiig Apanga, the Defense Counsel for the only female accused of high treason together with nine others, on Thursday told a witness in the matter that the voice labelled as that of a female is not his client’s.
He challenged Mr Isaac Osei, the Prosecution witness from the Ghana Institute of Languages (GIL), who together with his team transcribed and translated the audios and videos, that; “Your conclusion that a voice in audio labelled as June 22, 2018, is a female voice is your conjecture and not something you have verified.”
Do you know that people can mimic other people’s voices, the lawyer continued but Mr Osei said: “You are saying so…..we did it to the best of our ability”.
Mr Lamtiig also said the witness did not see the video of that audio in order to identify the female he claimed spoke, and he (Mr Osei) admitted that he did not see the person who spoke in the audio.
Defense Counsel insisted that the translator/ transcriber was not a voice expert, therefore, he was not in the position to identify the voice.
“Yes, we did not know the persons but ascribed numbers to voices as they spoke,” Mr Osei explained to the High Court, presided over by a three-member panel of judges.
Mr Osei also told the Court that later Staff Sergeant Sule Awarf, the star prosecution witness, who did the recordings, assisted in identifying some of the persons in it.
Counsel again accused the witness of his failure to record the exact words in other languages and translated same, which had rendered the transcription unreliable, but the witness said one typo error did not render the whole work unreliable.
Mr Anthony Lartey, Defense Counsel for Johannes Zipki, told the witness that in transcribing he modified the audios and videos by adding his own words.
Witness, however, answered that he and his team were guided by professional ethics in handling documents of such nature.
“The names you attributed were just the names that Awarf Sule later gave you,” he told Mr Osei, who responded that “Not partly so because though Awarf provided some names of persons involved, some names naturally came up and we used understanding of when the names came up to ascribe those speaking”.
Warrant Officer Esther Saan, alias “Maa Gee,” and Zipki are standing trial with Dr Frederick Yao Mac Palm, Donyo Kafui, Bright Alan Debrah, alias BB, and Colonel Samuel Gameli, for varied offences including conspiracy, possession of weapons, high treason and abetment.
The others are Corporal Seidu Abubakar, Airforce Corporal Ali Solomon, Corporal Sylvester Akanpew and Assistant Commissioner of Police Dr Benjamin Kwasi Agordzo.
All 10 have been granted bail.
Source: GNA