The Director General in charge of Public Relations of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF), Eric Aggrey Quarshie, has said that they have received plaudits from several Ghanaians for the action they took at Asahiman following the killing of a soldier.
He said that people are asking when they will visit the area again.
Speaking at the Annual General Meeting and the National Public Relations and Communications Summit of the Institue of Public Relations on Thursday, March 23, he explained that a lot of things have been happening at Asahiman however the killing of the soldier Sherrif Imoro became the last straw that broke the camel’s back
He said “whatever happened in Ashaiman was not something somebody woke up one morning and said let us go to Asahiman, so many things are taking place and our soldier dying became like the last straw that broke the camel’s back.
“Ashaiman, there are still sections that the Police cannot go and effect an arrest, they won’t dare. Somebody commits a crime and you can’t go there to even arrest the person and so we were tracking the event.”
He added “The number of calls that I have received and the institution has received, thanking us for the actions in Asahiman. People are asking when will [we] do that again.”
The military was heavily criticised for taking the law into their own hands to brutalize and arrest some persons they suspected to be killers of the soldier.
For instance, the National Peace Council said they should have allowed the Police to handle the situation.
Speaking on the mid-day news on TV3 Monday, March 13, Executive Secretary of the Peace Council, George Amoh said that the Police had the expertise to deal with situations of this kind hence, the military should have exercised restraints.
He said “…coming from a human rights point of view, I think that the Military could have allowed the Police to investigate it.
“Our Police have the resilience and all the strategies to get whoever was involved so I think they should have exercised residents and allowed the Police whose duty it is to arrest people of such nature, those who commit crimes. to do it. The Police have indicated strongly that they have the capacity to do that.”
It has emerged that Imoro Sherrif, the soldier who was killed in Ashaiman Taifa on Saturday, March 4, was stabbed in the left arm.
It had initially been reported that the trooper in the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) was stabbed in the neck following the attack by armed robbers.
“Further investigation has established that suspects Samuel Tetteh and Abubakar Sadick at about 1:45 am on 4th March 2023 attacked the deceased at Taifa Ashiaman in an attempt to rob him of his phone and a backpack,” police said in a statement issued on Sunday, March 12.
“The deceased, however, resisted and struggled with the suspects.
“During the struggle, suspect Samuel Tetteh pulled out a knife and stabbed the deceased in the arm, snatched his phone and bolted leaving the deceased with the knife stuck in his arm.”
This is said to have been confirmed by a pathologist’s report after a post-mortem examination conducted on Wednesday, March 8.
“A postmortem examination was performed on the deceased’s body on 8th March 2023, after which the pathologist gave the verbal cause of death as exsanguination and laceration of major vessels of left arm consistent with stabbed injury.”
The soldier was laid to rest on Thursday, March 9 at the New Military Cemetery in Burma Camp.
The police led by the Tema Regional Police Command on Sunday, March 12 “visited the family of the deceased and briefed them on the investigations done so far”.
“We wish to commend all police officers at all levels of Command, especially the crack police intelligence and investigation teams as well as the Ashiaman District Police Command for their professionalism and meticulous dedication, working around the clock to unravel this case.”
