Bashiru Kwaw-Swanzy

Bashiru Kwaw-Swanzy was a lawyer who served as Attorney-General and Minister of Justice in Nkrumah's First Republic. He was born Benard Edward Kwaw-Swanzy at Beyin in the Nzema area of the Western Region on 25 October 1921 and died at Korle Bu on 15 September 1997.

He trained for the Catholic priesthood at St Theresa's Seminary, Amisano, then went to Achimota and St Augustine's College, where he qualified as a teacher. He studied history at the University of Manchester and did research at Cambridge, and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1954.

He practised from 1955 and chaired the Timber Marketing Board from 1960, then became deputy to Attorney-General Geoffrey Bing. Abroad he won the acquittal of about 80 members of Zanzibar's Afro-Shirazi Party charged with murder after the 1960 riots, and in The Gambia defended Dawda Jawara, later the country's president, against charges of electoral fraud. He became Attorney-General in 1962. After Nkrumah's fall he was detained at Ussher Fort, where he converted to Islam in 1967 and took the name Bashiru. In 1974 he was elected joint chairman of the Ghana Muslim Representative Council. He had two wives and eight children.