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Foreign Affairs Minister, Hanna Serwaa Tetteh has said accepting Guantanamo detainees in Ghana couldn’t have been probable without some security advice from experts.

According to her, even though the USA approached Ghana to deliver the prisoners, the government of Ghana did some needful checks on them with the help of the USA before an agreement was made.

Speaking to Accra-based Radio Gold – Hon Tetteh revealed former Defence Minister and current Ghana’s Ambassador to the USA, H.E Lieutenant General Joseph Smith was asked by the American government to personally interview the detainees whiles in prison in Guantanamo before their release.

“Government also discussed this with the country’s security apparatus. We did not just accept them,” she said. 

Ghana’s decision to offer residence to some discharged former convicts housed in the popular hardcore cell, Guantanamo Bay but supposedly weaned off their fundamentalist idealogies, has generated ceaseless public opprobrium.

Many believe in the mind of a jihadist, Ghana becomes a legitimate target for attacks if the deal to give the ex-detainees a stay in the country, is not reversed – but the Foreign Affairs minister thinks otherwise. She argues that irrespective of the presence of the two Yemeni nationals in the country, the threat of "terrorism" is real to the world; Ghanaians inclusive. 

“Whether these two men are here or not, Ghana is expose to terrorism; but we are protected,” she said. 

The two ex-detainees, Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby, arrived in Ghana on Thursday January 7, 2016 for a two-year stay as part of a deal reached between the United States of America and the Government of Ghana.