Since filing an injunction against the committee probing petitions for her removal, suspended Chief Justice Gertrude Torkornoo has submitted an additional application alleging inhuman treatment and rights abuses.
In this supplementary affidavit, filed on Monday, she alleges violations of her dignity and basic constitutional rights to a fair trial.
She also says she’s been subjected to “inhuman and degrading treatment, of a kind not meted out to even accused persons on trial for treason and other offences against the state.”
To support her claims, she notes that the committee had, during the start of the proceedings, failed to recognise her lawyer and proceeded to fix dates for the hearings without involving him.
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She also cites other instances, where she claims her husband and children were denied access to the hearing room, searches on her body, and the denial of access to telephones and laptops for herself and her lawyers, “even though counsel for petitioners have access to their phones and laptops.”
“The conduct of the hearing itself in a high security zone at the premises of the Castle, Osu, shows a deliberate effort to subject me to mental torture and degrading treatment in violation of my fundamental rights,” the application stated.
Her arguments also appear to hinge on the prima facie determination, which sets the basis for the committee’s work.
“That this was so, even though I have to date, not been told the basis for the determination of a prima facie case against me and the specific allegations in respect of which a prima facie case has been established for me to answer, to enable me determine my legal rights or adequately prepare a defence to the charges against me,” she noted.
This additional filing comes almost a week after she’s asked the Supreme Court to restrain the committee and some of its members from continuing the probes into the petitions for her removal.
It is not immediately clear when the Supreme Court will hear the matters of the suspended Chief Justice’s applications, although last week the court dismissed two separate applications that appear to seek the same end as Justice Torkornoo’s case.