Private legal practitioner Samson Lardy Anyenini has said that the option left for Jubilee House is to sue Al Jazeera following the media establishment’s refusal to retract and apologise for claims about President Akufo-Addo in their Gold Mafia documentary.
The presidency had issued a seven-day ultimatum to Al Jazeera to retract and apologise for alleged misrepresentation of the President in the documentary which exposes corruption, gold smuggling and money laundering on the continent of Africa.
Al Jazeera has responded it is unable to grant the wishes of the presidency, because it has done no wrong.
Mr Anyenini said that the court becomes the place to prove the media house intended to slander the president “once you couch the complaint in the manner of defamation.
In this case, they actually say it’s malicious defamation, which means there was clear intent and malice, to do what they did. They knew it was wrong and untrue but proceeded to publish.”
A letter signed by Secretary to the President, Nana Bediatuo Asante on April 25, stated; “I am instructed by the President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, to demand formally that Al Jazeera Media Network (Al Jazeera”) retract immediately and apologise for airing an inaccurate and unfair documentary that contained spurious and unsubstantiated allegations against the President and the Government of Ghana.”
However, Al Jazeera, in its reply on Thursday, May 4 to JoyNews’ Kwaku Asante’s email requesting a response to the demands by the presidency, said it does not owe the president nor his office any apology since it did not allege the issues raised in the letter from Jubilee House demanding the retraction and apology.
“The President can take up the suit in any part of the world but more conveniently in Ghana and when he wins, the question remains how do you enforce the judgment? We have a way of enforcing a foreign judgement, as long as there is what we call the reciprocity kind of agreement,” Mr Anyenini said.
Background: How Ghana appeared in Al Jazeera’s ‘Gold Mafia’ documentary
Early on in April, Ghana popped up in a damning investigative documentary conducted into some of Zimbabwe’s gold smuggling and money laundering syndicates.
In the concluding episode, undercover journalists posing as Chinese gangsters interact with one of the key players, Alistair Mathias to help clean a supposed dirty money.