Missing Parcels of Cocaine - Big Names To Pop Up

As Appeals Court Sets Scapegoats Free

Snippets of information filtering through from intelligence circles to your authoritative, The Catalyst, indicate that fingers are pointing to some bigwigs in the erstwhile New Patriotic Party (NPP) government who have questions to answer as far as the search for the real culprits of the monumental drug-related crime of the ‘missing’ 77 parcels of cocaine aboard MV Benjamin is concerned. The Catalyst has been hinted that sooner than later, Ghanaians will get to know the actual criminals involved in the importation of 77 parcels of cocaine into the country in 2006, and the truth about how the drug dramatically vanished into thin air after being arrested.

The people of Ghana will then become clear in their minds as to why the Georgina Wood Committee’s sittings were effectively truncated by the arrest at the Committee of some so-called suspects in relation to the ‘missing’ cocaine, and why those suspects were hastily arranged before court on, what has been termed as, trump-up charges and subsequently imprisoned.

Long-held widespread beliefs that the real culprits in the case of the so-called 77 missing parcels of cocaine from MV Benjamin were out there walking free, was confirmed by the Court of Appeal on Friday when Kwabena Amaning alias Tagor and Alhaji Abass, were set free for wrongful incarceration by an Accra Fast Track High Court in November 2007.

The two “scapegoats” who were brought to court handcuffed to each other, audaciously walked out of the court room as free men and would have gone straight home but for procedural purposes. They were sent back to their prison cells only for the completion of the paperwork concerning their release from prison before they can be able to step out into their newly regained freedom. As part of its uncompromising commitment to fighting drugs, the “expected” development leaves the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government with no option than to embark on a “missing 77 parcels of cocaine witch-hunt” in a bid to find the real perpetrators of the serious crime and bring them to justice, this paper has been told.

This crime, according to our impeccable source, is one of a monumental scale that must not be pushed under the carpet but thoroughly investigated and the perpetrators fished out for punishment to serve as a deterrent.

Emerging facts regarding the real perpetrators of this crime, The Catalyst has leant, will blow the minds of the people of Ghana when the search is complete. The facts, the paper has learnt, show that the imprisonment of the two men was diversionary and a cover-up by the alleged real culprits who, according to this paper’s information, appear to be very powerful people at the time.

The Atta Mills-led NDC government has vowed to sincerely fight drugs by hunting all ‘cocaine witches’ in the system in a bid to flush out them out, for a better Ghana.

There is clear evidence that drug trafficking in Ghana, and to some extent, the West African sub-region has taken a drastic nosedive since the new NDC government assumed power on January 7, 2009. Currently, there is shortage of narcotic drugs in Ghana according to experts.

Following massive public outcry questioning the bizarre circumstances that led to the so-called disappearance of the 77 parcels of cocaine from MV Benjamin on April 26, 2006, the NPP government set up the Georgina Wood committee on July 4, 2006, to investigate the disappearance of the drug among others.

Some have described the Committee’s work as window-dressing when it failed to find the whereabouts of the large quantity of the ‘missing’ cocaine. Meanings were also read into the decision by President Kufuor to make Justice Georgina Wood the Chief Justice afterwards when her seniors at the bench were still around.

Based on an anonymous tape recording dropped at the Committee, the Committee recommended the prosecution of ACP Kofi Boakye, which recommendation was ignored by the government, Kwabena Amaning a.k.a Tagor, Issah Abass, Kwabena Acheapong and Mohamed Moro.

On November 28, 2007, the Fast Track High Court (FTHC) presided over by Mr. Justice Victor Jones Dotse, who is now a Supreme Court judge, found the two ‘suspects’ guilty for conspiracy, engaging in prohibited business relating to narcotic drugs and sentenced each of them to 15 years imprisonment.

But a three-member panel of the Court of Appeal, chaired by Mr Justice Peasare, with Mr Justice Yaw Appau and Mr Justice Addo as members quashed the earlier ruling by the Fast Track High Court and ordered the immediate release of Tagor and Abass who had each spent a year and seven months in prison.

The release of the two businessmen has reopened public enquiry into the whereabouts of the ‘missing’ 77 parcels of cocaine. This paper’s intelligence source has hinted that the new government will pursue the matter to its logical conclusion.

The big question being asked however is where such a process will leave those in power at the time.