Member of The Board of Trustees
As a practicing attorney and human rights activist, Martin Luther Kpebu comes to JSI as a member of the board of Trustees with a badge of activism for social justice. Mr Kpebu has won five Supreme Court of Ghana (SCOG) groundbreaking constitutional cases. Out of the five, he singlehandedly argued four of the cases at SCOG to strike down two laws that infringed the human rights of accused persons and sureties (bondmen). He won the interpretation of two other laws for fair trials. These decisions that struck down 2 laws are that all criminal offences are now bailable, and sureties can no longer be jailed when a suspect absconds. The favorable interpretations are that the state can give accused person the evidence it intends to rely on at the trial (disclosure of evidence), before a trial starts and finally, a few courts must sit during weekends and public holidays to hear bail applications by suspects where the police do not wish to grant bail within 48 hours of the arrest. The fifth case is a decision by SCOG that declared as unconstitutional the decision in 2020 by the president of Ghana that the auditor-general must go on leave and the president’s appointment of an acting auditor-general. Through his crowd funding initiative, Mr. Kpebu has demonstrated how passionate he is about the safety of journalists by raising thousands of US dollars to support the payment of medical bills for multiple award-winning journalist, Latif Iddrisu of the Multimedia Group who suffered a fractured skull and needed medical attention including surgery, following an assault by officers of the Ghana Police Service in 2018. As a progressive and an outspoken critic of current and past governments in Ghana, Mr Kpebu’s passion for the safety of the news media and journalists for that matter cannot be understated, and that is what he brings to Journalists Sanctuary International.