Convenor of the Economic Fighters League, Ernesto Yeboah, who was arrested at a Black Lives Matter vigil held in Accra last Saturday, will face the court today, Thursday, June 11, 2020.
Ernesto Yeboah has been charged on two counts – failing to notify the Police about the vigil and breaching E.I 64.
“The charges were that I did not notify the Police which was a lie and that the E.I was also breached which was also false. Before anyone entered the space, we were hand sanitized, our ushers were there to do that and if you came without a mask, you will be given one.”
“We were just about 60. We knew who and who was coming. There was a list. I have been charged on these two counts. On Thursday at 8.30, I will be in court and my lawyers will be there with me to begin the case,” he told Bernard Koku Avle on the Face to Face on Citi TV.
I sat 14 hours throughout the night
Ernesto Yeboah said he “sat for 14 hours throughout the night” at the Police Station, following his arrest.
“The Police officers tried as much as possible not to make things difficult for me. Nobody questioned me. It was in the morning that charges were pressed [against me].”
He pointed out that he has “no regrets for holding the vigil because the group did nothing wrong.”
“All we did was to follow laid down procedure and it is not new to us. It is something we have been doing. If there is any dishonesty that we have been pointing at it is what you are seeing now, that the state and the Police all coming down to clamp down on good people. This is not an Ernesto Yeboah versus the state case. It is the people versus the system.”
Mr. Yeboah was arrested and detained at the Accra Central Police Station after the police and military disrupted a vigil they were organizing at the Black Stars Square last Saturday.
The Police had said the vigil was not authorised, a claim Ernesto Yeboah has denied.
