The boyfriend of former EastEnders actor Sian Blake, suspected of killing her and her two children, should be released from prison in Ghana until official extradition proceedings are under way, his lawyer has said.
Arthur Simpson-Kent had no access to a lawyer since his arrest on Saturday until he appeared in court, and he should be released until there is an official request for his extradition approved by the interior ministry, according to his legal representative, Justice Srem-Sai.
“We have human rights law in Ghana,” Srem-Sai said. “You cannot arrest someone unlawfully, and that person must be released until you have the legal right to detain them. He was not given his full rights, including access to legal counsel. His right to a fair trial is being denied and is still being denied.”
Simpson-Kent arrived in Ghana three days after speaking to police about his missing partner and their two children. Their bodies were found buried in the garden of the family home in Erith, south-east London. Simpson-Kent was arrested over the weekend at the beach resort of Busua, after locals informed authorities.
Srem-Sai said he had been engaged on Saturday by British solicitors acting for Simpson-Kent, and had attempted to visit his client in prison on multiple occasions, both at the police headquarters and at Ghana’s Bureau of National Investigations (BNI), where Simpson-Kent is being held.
He and family members will attempt visits again over the coming days to the BNI facility – Ghana’s equivalent of the FBI.
“We went to the police and to the BNI and told he was not there,” Srem-Sai said. The only exchange the men were allowed was Srem-Sai asking for Simpson-Kent’s consent for the lawyer to represent him, as he was led into court on Tuesday, which Simpson-Kent agreed. Charges of murder were put to him in court on Tuesday, Srem-Sai said.
The main arguments lawyers will make for his release is that the proper procedure for his arrest was not followed. If extradition is sought, Ghana must receive a request from the UK high commission, examined by the minister of the interior, Srem-Sai said.
“If the minister approves, they must go to court to obtain an arrest warrant from the judge to detain the person. There was no warrant for Arthur’s arrest,” he said.
The Metropolitan police praised the swiftness of the police response in Ghana after they requested the arrest of Simpson-Kent. Speaking in Accra after Simpson-Kent was arrested, the Met’s DCI Graeme Gwyn said: “The work they have done has been outstanding and I am truly, truly grateful. I am satisfied it was done as quickly as we could to have got here.”
The Met is under investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission over how it investigated the death of Blake and her sons Zachary, eight, and Amon, four.
The Met commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, said on Wednesday he will not judge anybody yet over a three-week delay. “These things are never quite so straightforward as they first appear. We need to look at the facts and get to the bottom of it,” he told LBC radio. “It’s a tragedy, a mother and her two children murdered, and that’s an awful, terrible thing. We need to find out, could we have dealt with it more efficiently?
“One of the things we need to know is, was it possible to discover them earlier, or were there other lines of inquiry being pursued that were more likely? We need to know the circumstances of those 23 days. The fact that it’s taken so long to find them suggests that we could have done it quicker. But without knowing the facts I’m not going to judge anybody.”