General News of Thursday, 26 April 2012Source: citifmonline A lawyer for embattled Assin North MP, Nii Ayikoi Otoo, has described as regrettable the decision by a group to engage the International Criminal Court to investigate what it terms the genocidal and ethnic-cleansing pronouncements made by the NPP legislator.

According to the lawyer, the group will fail in their efforts. The Ghana Coalition for the International Criminal Court has called on the ICC to act in a timely manner to avert bloodshed.

The group said it believes Mr. Adjapong’s statements make him liable for prosecution under Article 3c of the United Nations Convention on the prevention of genocide. But lawyer Otoo said the group is misinformed.

He said: “All these genocide and terrorism acts were acts of domesticating. The acts that we passed in Ghana was not aimed at anything happening in this country. It’s never happened before.

“Again, if you have the judicial system which would work, you don’t need any ICC, so I’m surprised that somebody has been charged before our court, he’s yet to be tried and somebody goes to say he should be taken to ICC.”

“Is that what the law permits? What the law is saying is that if you don’t have the judicial competence to try certain cases please bring those cases up for us to deal with. Therefore they are completely wrong and out of order to be doing what they are doing,” Lawyer Otoo pointed out.**