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The Tema Circuit Court has acquitted and discharged 13 artisanal salt miners who faced criminal charges for standing up against Electrochem Ghana Limited, the company operating West Africa’s largest salt deposits in Ada.
The miners, who faced 11 charges, including rioting, unlawful entry, and assault, jubilated spontaneously when the judge freed them on Thursday, May 29, 2025.
Their release is freedom from traveling over 91 kilometers from Ada to the Tema Circuit Court at least once a month since they were arrested in October 2021 and later granted bail.
The arrest stemmed from an incident on October 21, 2021, when salt miners from Luhour and surrounding communities in the Ada West District prevented a police pickup truck carrying two masked individuals and two police officers from driving through their neighborhoods.
Scores of residents in the communities demanded that the police unmask the two individuals whom they suspected to be private security personnel of Electrochem Ghana Limited. The youth had claimed Electrochem used its private security to brutalise local salt miners accused of encroachment. A claim the company denies.
On that day, a scuffle ensued, compelling the security personnel to retreat.
The police returned the next day
Police officers stormed the community the next day and reportedly beat up residents, burned motorbikes, and broke into homes. Twenty-nine residents, including many who were not at the scene on October 21, 2021, were arrested.
For four years, the residents endured a prosecution that the presiding judge, Justice Agnes Opoku-Barnieh, a High Court judge sitting as an additional Circuit Court judge, said lacked evidence.
You failed to prove your case. You were unable to link any of them [the thirteen accused] to the incident,” the judge pointed out.
The judge noted that some police officers presented as eyewitnesses failed to corroborate the prosecution’s allegations against the accused persons.
“The people you mentioned as witnesses, you saw how they were all behaving during [the cross-examination],” the judge said of the prosecutor, Chief Inspector Gifty Konadu.
Earlier, the lawyer for the 13 artisanal miners, Wayoe Ghanamannti, argued for a submission of no case, stating that the prosecution failed to link the accused to any crime.
He said the Luhour community’s protests against Electrochem’s takeover of the entire Songor Lagoon suggest the arrests were a response to a resistance.
“Safe to say that there could have been some protest in the Luhour community to register their displeasure against Electrochem’s entire takeover of the Ada Songor Lagoon to deny them of their source of livelihood, a source they have depended on as a community since time immemorial,” Mr Ghanamannti argued.
He further contended that the police, protecting Electrochem’s interests, had conducted frequent raids, arresting those perceived as resisting the company’s operations in their communities.
Ghanamannti praised the judge’s fairness and described the acquittal as a victory for justice and the Ada community.
This is not the first time the Tema Circuit Court acquitted artisanal miners who were arrested concerning a protest against Electrochem’s operation in Ada.
In August 2021, some 25 Ada residents were randomly arrested, detained, and prosecuted for more than three years on similar charges.
In that judgment, Klorkor Okai-Mills, who presided over the Tema Circuit Court on July 18, 2024, cited unreliable prosecution evidence as the basis for the acquittal.
“On the totality of evidence led by the prosecution, I hold that the evidence adduced by the prosecution has been so discredited and is so manifestly unreliable that no reasonable tribunal could safely convict upon it. The submission of no case is accordingly upheld. The accused persons are acquitted and discharged.”
Background
The Akufo-Addo government in 2020 granted Electrochem concessions, whose size has become a thorny issue with some leaders who are against the deal, claiming the company has taken more land than it deserves.
They have accused the company of pushing artisanal miners whose families have been in the salt mining business for decades out of business while monopolizing the vast Songhor salt fields, believed to be West Africa’s largest.
Ever since the company started its operations in Ada, violent clashes have become frequent. Sometimes, Electrochem staff come under attack, and other times, brutality is visited on communities around the Songor Lagoon.
Between 2021 and 2023, there were at least 28 recorded clashes, leaving dozens, including minors, injured. It was during one of such bouts of attack and reprisal in August 2021 that Modzifa Anim was dragged half-naked from her bathroom and sent to a police station in Tema, where she and 29 others were detained for two weeks without bail.
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