Court documents in the high-profile defamation case between investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas and former MP for Assin Central, Kennedy Agyapong, have revealed how the former legislator backed down on his own explosive allegations.
Anas Aremeyaw Anas won a defamation case against Kennedy Agyapong after suing the former MP in the US over an interview in which Agyapong made several allegations against Anas, following the latter’s controversial football documentary “Betraying the Game”, also known as Number 12, which exposed corruption in 2018.
In the explosive interview conducted in the US, Kennedy Agyapong described Anas as evil and a criminal and also alleged he was behind the killing of Ghanaian journalist Ahmed Suale, as well as some Chinese nationals in Ghana.
However, details have emerged of how the usually daring former MP told the New Jersey Court that his claims were “unverifiable” and “emotional verbal rants” in a political feud against Anas.
Agyapong, through his lawyers, sought to get Anas’ suit dismissed on several grounds, including that his allegations did not meet the threshold for a successful defamation plea.
“A plaintiff seeking to prove defamation must establish: (1) that the defendant made a false and defamatory statement concerning [the plaintiff]; (2) that the defendant communicated the statement to another unprivileged person; and (3) that [the] defendant[] acted negligently or with actual malice,” Kennedy Agyapong’s statement of defence said, citing previous cases.
Citing several legal sources and opinions within the jurisdiction, Kennedy Agyapong’s statement of defence continued: “the court must consider the statement’s content, verifiability, and context to determine if it’s defamatory. A statement’s content must be judged not by its literal meaning, but by its objective meaning to a reasonable person . . .,” and as such, insults and hyperbole are not considered defamatory.
“In considering verifiability, the court must determine whether the statement ‘can be proved true or false.’ Insults and opinion statements that don’t imply false underlying facts are non-actionable,” Kennedy Agyapong’s statement of defence said, implying that his claims, which were the subject of the defamation suit, were not actionable because they could not be verified as true or false.
“Finally, as the context in which a statement is made may affect its meaning, the assessing court must consider the factual background, time, and place in which the defendant made the statement. While opinions may be the subject of defamation claims when they ‘imply false underlying objective facts,’ they are generally unverifiable and thus exempt from being classified as defamation,” Kennedy’s statement added, citing another legal opinion to buttress the point.
Opinions, Kennedy Agyapong’s statement of defence noted, need not necessarily be expressed as “state of mind” statements, but may be made in ”hyperbolic and figurative language”, which “probably don’t imply specific underlying facts.”
Having laid bare precedents in New Jersey courts and other legal opinions, Kennedy Agyapong’s statement of defence said that statements he made against Anas are “opinionated” which “our courts have held is non-actionable.”
Criminal and Thief Allegations
According to Kennedy Agyapong’s statement of defence, the terms “criminal” and “thief”, which he used to refer to Anas, are “certainly not endearing, though in the context of the parties’ ongoing political feuding, they represent no more than insults and a personal distaste for the actions of the plaintiff (Anas).
“That the terms criminal and thief are both used to describe persons who have committed crimes does not make these defamation per se; as Wilson highlights, statements that an individual engages in or is like a criminal or highly immoral person are not defamation when made in the context of heated and opinionated feuds such as that between Plaintiff Anas and Defendant Agyapong. These terms, when used in common language and outside the realm of courts, are broadly used to demean the party referred to and are not strictly used to describe literal criminal activity.”
Allegation on Death of Ahmed Suale and Chinese Nationals
On this allegation, Kennedy Agyapong’s statement of defence again said his claim was an ”opinion without strict proof.”
“Moreover, the statement regarding the Plaintiff’s responsibility for the deaths of multiple Chinese nationals and Ahmed Suale are opinions without strict verifiability.”
“Not only are these statements another example of hyperbolic rhetoric made in the course of a heated feud, this statement only references a broad sense of responsibility that the plaintiff has for the deaths of these individuals which cannot be strictly verified as true or false,” said the statement of defence.
“In common language, even more so than with its variable definitions in legal vocabulary, responsibility is an immensely broad concept and statements regarding responsibility in such broad terms are not verifiable in any meaningful sense. All of the Plaintiff’s statements made on the Daddy Fred Show were made in the context of an ongoing politicised feud between Agyapong and Anas.”
“If the Defendant did make insulting statements toward the Plaintiff, these statements represent the exact sort of hyperbolic speech one expects during a political feud which listeners are not likely to take seriously.”
Following these alleged insulting depictions of Agyapong’s political party in the documentary “Betraying the Game”, Agyapong clearly stated that his feuding and referencing of the Plaintiff’s character was to highlight “that he is not a genuine journalist . . . he is corrupt instead.” Indorsement on Writ of Summons at 22, Anas v. Agyapong, GJ/892/2018, (quoting Defendant’s appearance on Adom TV, dated July 3, 2018).
In the allegation made by Kennedy Agyapong that Anas was responsible for the death of some Chinese nationals, Kennedy’s defence was that Anas had misinterpreted his words, that he (Kennedy Agyapong) “stated that, he, . . . has proven in a court of law, that, the Plaintiff (Anas) has indeed murdered multiple Chinese nationals.”
“The Defendant’s (Kennedy Agyapong) statement that he ‘has gone to court, and stated it clearly,’ is not equivalent to him saying he had gone to court and proven that the Plaintiff conspired in the murder of these Chinese nationals; rather, he only stated that he attempted to do so in court, and as such this statement was not false,” said the statement of defence.
“Even if this was assumed to be implied by the Defendant’s statement, in the context of the interview this statement was not defamatory because it was appropriate for the Defendant to report on his own actions in the ongoing investigations into these murders in Ghana.”
“As such, because the statements referenced in the Plaintiff’s complaint are mere hyperbole and opinion or otherwise appropriate statements to be made in the context of the discussion between Asamoah and Agyapong regarding Anas, they are non-actionable and therefore the defendant has a meritorious defence to the action.”
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