Two robbers jailed 35 years each

Koforidua, May 8, GNA- A Koforidua High Court presided over by Mr Justice Fred Mensah, on Monday, sentenced two armed robbers to 35 years imprisonment each.

The court found Maxwell Akuffo, 25 and Ahmed Abiola, a 28-year-old Nigerian guilty of robbery and conspiracy to robbery. They were each given 35 years on the charge of robbery and another five years each on the charge of conspiracy, both sentences are to run concurrently.

The court, however acquitted a third suspect, Victor Azan Abdullai. A Senior State Attorney, Mrs Emily Addo-Okyireh who prosecuted the case, said the convicts were part of a group of five persons who somewhere in 2005 blocked the Osino-Begoro road in the Eastern Region ostensibly to rob tomato "market queens" on that route of their money. She said some drivers plying the road got wind of the operation and alerted the New Tafo police about the intended attack. Mrs Addo-Okyireh said when the Police got to Osino they negotiated with one of the truck drivers for his vehicle to be used as a decoy to assist the police apprehend the robbers.

She said on reaching the spot, the robbers attacked the driver and succeeded in robbing him of five hundred thousand cedis. The police who were monitoring the whole operation without the knowledge of the robbers swiftly moved in and rounded them-up. In the course of their arrest a shot-out broke out and one of the robbers was shot and killed, while two others who attempted to escape through a near-by thicket was foiled through the help of residents of a near-by village who helped in arresting them. Investigations later proved that Attah, the robber who died in the shot-out, was the twin-brother of Kwabena Attah, the second accused who also died in the cause of the trial.

The court also found Victor Azan Abdullai not guilty of the charges preferred against him because he demonstrated to the court that he was merely invited by the convicts to join them on a trip to Begoro in the Fanteakwa District of the Eastern Region to purchase tomatoes. Abdullai was able to convince the court that because he refused to join in the attack, he was thrown into a cocoa farm.