Defence Committee to haul CID boss before Parliament over social media cases – Ntim Fordjour

The Ranking Member on Parliament’s Defence and Interior Committee, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour, says the Committee will invite the Director-General of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service to explain how the Service is handling cases involving offensive social media content.

According to the Assin South MP, the Committee has taken interest in a recent press conference by the CID Director-General and intends to question her and the sector Minister on other incidents and investigations that were not addressed during the briefing.

Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile, Rev. Ntim Fordjour said the Committee wants the CID to provide a broader account of how similar cases are being handled across the country.

“I would like to indicate that, as the ranking member of Defense and Interior Committee, we’ve taken interest in the press conference that was recently done by the Director General of Ghana CID, and so we are going to invite her. We’re going to haul her and her minister before our committee at the earliest opportunity to apprise us of all such similar, you know, incidents which didn’t find expression in her press conference and actions being taken across the board. We are very interested.”

He said the Committee had identified several other incidents involving what he described as offensive videos, comments and security-related intelligence that required the attention of the police.

Rev. Ntim Fordjour argued that some of those cases had potentially greater security implications than the issues highlighted by the CID Director-General.

“We want to point out to her across the board of various offensive videos, comments, and certain incidents and intel that have come to our attention and also publicly known, which have been so conspicuously being glossed over, which have bigger weight and bigger a magnitude and, security implications than what she singled out.”

He said the Committee would therefore require the CID Director-General and the Minister responsible for the sector to account for the action taken on such matters.

“So we are going to haul her before Parliament,” he added.

Rev. Ntim Fordjour’s comments come amid public debate over the arrest and prosecution of social media commentator Salomey, whose case has raised questions about the limits of police powers in dealing with online speech.