Senior Counsel, Mr Samuel Atta Akyea, has asked the High Court in Accra to allow him to recall a witness who testified in the trial of former Ashanti Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Bernard Antwi-Boasiako, in the Tano Nimire illegal mining case for further cross-examination.
This was after the Attorney-General closed its case against the accused, who is standing trial for aiding illegal mining activities at the Tano Nimire Forest Reserve in the Ashanti Region.
Mr Akyea was directed by the court to file a motion to recall the witness on or before Friday, October 30.
The case has been adjourned to November 4 for the motion to be moved by Mr Akyea.
The prosecution invited three witnesses to make its case against the accused.
A police detective, Eugene Akpor Glover, the third and last witness, had earlier told the court during cross-examination that Boasiako aided illegal mining at the Tano Nimire Forest Reserve.
Mr Akyea suggested to the policeman that his client never personally used any machine on the Tano Nimire concession.
Detective Glover agreed that Boasiako never personally used a machine on the concession but added that the accused, popularly known as Chairman Wontumi, aided some persons to undertake mining activities contrary to law.
Mr Akyea suggested to the witness that Boasiako was innocent and that his testimony could not hold against the accused.
The policeman insisted that investigations revealed Boasiako was complicit.
Chairman Wontumi and his company, Akonta Mining, have been charged with aiding illegal mining at the Tano Nimire Forest Reserve.
Akonta Mining, as a company, is also facing charges of felling trees in a forest reserve without written authority from the competent forest authority and erecting buildings in a forest reserve without written authority from the competent forest authority.
Chairman Wontumi is personally facing two separate counts of abetting the unauthorised felling of trees in a forest reserve, contrary to Section 1(1)(a) of the Forest Protection Act, 1974 (NRCD 243), as amended by Section 1 of the Forest Protection (Amendment) Act, 2002 (Act 624), and Section 20(1) of the Criminal Act, 1960 (Act 29).
He has been accused of mining in the Tano Nimire Forest Reserve without a licence and purposely facilitating the unauthorised felling of more than 300 merchantable trees and an unquantifiable number of saplings in the same forest reserve.
The accused, together with his company, was charged with six counts of undertaking a mining operation without a licence, felling trees and abetting the felling of trees in a forest reserve without written authority from the competent forest authority.
BY MALIK SULLEMANA
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