The lawyer for the 31 individuals who were arrested and charged on suspicion that they engaged in the disturbances believed to have been undertaken by the Homeland Study Group Foundation, Theophilus Donkor has stressed that his clients are innocent.
They were on Monday, September 28, 2020, charged on three counts of conspiracy to commit crime of rioting, substantive offence of rioting and being at an unlawful place.
In an interview on Eyewitness News, Mr. Donkor said the 31 individuals have no affiliation with any secessionist group.
“They have nothing to do with any secessionist group in the Volta Region. No one has recruited them into any secessionist group. These are innocent Ghanaians who were going about their lawful duties.”
“Some of them are Nigerians, others were travelling from Ashaiman to Accra, others from the Volta Region to Accra, when they were arrested. The time they were arrested is very important. The police got to the scene at the time the real perpetrators had fled, so these people just happened to have been at the wrong place at the wrong time. Nothing incriminating was found on any of them, these ones cannot even hurt a fly,” he insisted.
Ghanaians on Friday, September 25, 2020, witnessed reports that the group had blocked some major roads leading into the Volta Region.
They mounted roadblocks on the Juapong–Accra, and Sogakope–Accra main roads.
The roadblocks were subsequently cleared as security agencies took control of the highways and strategic installations within the region.
Homeland Study Group Foundation wants the Volta Region and sections of the northern part of Ghana to be an autonomous country known as Western Togoland.
The group has made a number of attempts to push for the secession of the Volta Region from Ghana for the creation of a Western Togoland.
The group even declared independence for the Western Togoland on May 9, 2019.
Thirty of them were arrested in Juapong in the Eastern Region and one other was arrested at Akuse in the Volta Region.
The list includes 30 males and one female aged between 16 and 70 years.
