{"id":275429,"date":"2011-02-03T10:58:01","date_gmt":"2011-02-03T10:58:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/?p=50799"},"modified":"2011-02-03T10:58:01","modified_gmt":"2011-02-03T10:58:01","slug":"anas-cocoa-smugglers-freed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/02\/03\/anas-cocoa-smugglers-freed\/","title":{"rendered":"Anas&#8217; &#8216;Cocoa Smugglers&#8217; Freed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-32611\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/2010\/11\/11\/osu-children%e2%80%99s-home-report-kweku-baako-justifies-anas%e2%80%99-mode-of-investigations\/anas\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-32611\" title=\"anas\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/anas.jpg\" alt=\"Anas\" width=\"371\" height=\"279\" \/><\/a>The 14 security officials who were at  the centre of the alleged cocoa smuggling from the Western Region of  the country to Cote d&#8217;Ivoire, have for the second time, been discharged  for &#8216;want of prosecution&#8217;.<br \/>\nThe 14 men who are from the Customs,  Excise Preventive Service, the Ghana Police Service, and the Immigration  Service were arrested for prosecution in April, last year, following  undercover investigations by an ace investigative journalist, Anas  Aremeyaw Anas, last year.<br \/>\nBut on June 28, 2010, they were freed  by an Accra Circuit Court presided over by Mrs. Patience Mills Tetteh  for want of prosecution. This was after the prosecution failed to turn  up in court, after three consecutive adjournments at their instance.<br \/>\nThey  were, however, re-arrested later by the police, and on July 13, 2010,  arraigned on fresh charges of conspiracy to commit crime and attempted  smuggling at another Circuit Court presided over by Mrs. Adjoa Coleman.  However, five months into their arraignment, nothing has been done as  the case had suffered several adjournments until the judge began her  annual leave from August to October 2010.<br \/>\nWhen the case came up  for hearing on Tuesday, the prosecution led by Principal State Attorney,  Rexford Owiredu, failed to show up in court without any excuse or  notice, neither was he represented.<br \/>\nIn November, the prosecution  told the court that it intended to call its first witness in the person  of Anas and, therefore, prayed the court to grant them an in-camera  hearing for security reasons.<br \/>\nThe court in view of the submission  directed the prosecution to file a motion to that effect but as at  Tuesday when the accused persons were discharged, the prosecution had  not filed that motion.<br \/>\nThis prompted counsel for the accused led  by Raymond Bagnabu, to pray the court to discharge his clients as a  result of what he termed the inability and lack of desire by the  prosecution to start the case. The defence team also argued that  adjourning the matter would only glorify the impunity and disrespect  shown by the prosecution.<br \/>\nThe court then upheld the argument and  accordingly discharged the accused persons but said the prosecution  could bring them back whenever it was ready to prosecute case.<br \/>\nThe  accused persons are Gabriel Dimado, William Festus Yawson, Steven  Sowah, Prosper Edze, Nii Armah Adolf, James Dzamesi, Rockson Eric  Appeadu and Paul Dzamesi, all CEPS collection assistants. Others are  Police constables Isaac Kwaku Asare Darko, Samuel Kwasi Ekpeagba, and  J.K. Boakye. The rest are from the Immigration Service, Mate-Korle,  Frederick Kofiabley, and Kofi Aboagye.<br \/>\nUntil their discharge on Tuesday, each of them was on GH\u00a220,000 with two sureties.<br \/>\nIt  is the prosecution&#8217;s case that Anas had information that some security  officers at the Western frontier of the Ghana-Cote d&#8217;Ivoire border were  compromising their work by assisting people to smuggle dried cocoa beans  to the former country.<br \/>\nAccording to the prosecution, the  officers did so upon receipt of monetary consideration. Following the  information, Anas conducted initial investigations into the matter which  the prosecution claimed was captured on video which was later referred  to the police for further investigations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 14 security officials who were at the centre of the alleged cocoa smuggling from the Western Region of the country to Cote d&#8217;Ivoire, have for the second time, been discharged for &#8216;want of prosecution&#8217;. The 14 men who are from the Customs, Excise Preventive Service, the Ghana Police Service, and the Immigration Service were [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-275429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Anas&#039; &#039;Cocoa Smugglers&#039; Freed - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/02\/03\/anas-cocoa-smugglers-freed\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Anas&#039; &#039;Cocoa Smugglers&#039; Freed - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"The 14 security officials who were at the centre of the alleged cocoa smuggling from the Western Region of the country to Cote d&#8217;Ivoire, have for the second time, been discharged for &#8216;want of prosecution&#8217;. 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