Fetish Priest To Hang

A 37-year-old fetish priest and spiritualist, Joseph Tetteh, popularly called Mallam, who allegedly murdered a popular businesswoman in November, 2009 at Okorase, near Koforidua, has been found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging by a Koforidua High Court presided over by Justice G.S. Suurebareh.

A seven-member jury hearing the case yesterday unanimously returned a verdict of guilt against the fetish priest for murdering Rita Baah, 30.

Rita is said to have visited the shrine on November 14, 2009, and was murdered.

'By the decision of the jury, you are hereby sentenced to death. You will be taken back to the prison from where you were brought and hanged until you are dead and your body be buried at a place the state will order,' the judge said.

During the summing up of the prosecution by the state attorney, Akpene Motey, the accused was seen fervently praying to God.

The prosecution said that evidence from the five witnesses in the case as well as circumstantial evidence proved beyond doubt that the fetish priest intentionally and unlawfully killed Rita Baah but the reason for the murder had still not been given by the accused.

http://www.dailyguideghana.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/rita_baah.jpg

KILLED! Rita Baah alias Afia Rita
The defence counsel, Kin Hussein Ibn Alhassan, put up a strong case for his client to be acquitted because, according to him, evidence adduced in court was not sufficient enough to convict him.

After the sentence was given, the accused put up an aggressive posture, saying that the jury members were wrong in their decision and that it was only God who could judge him.

Prison officers who escorted the convict back to the prison virtually fought with journalists who attempted to take a photograph of him.

Relatives of the deceased who thronged the court hurled curses on the fetish priest after the sentence had been passed and were clearly relieved that justice had been done.

The facts of the case, as presented in court by the prosecution, are that Rita Baah, 30, who owned a shop at Koforidua, was a regular customer of Mallam Tetteh on her business and marital issues.

According to the prosecution, Rita, on November 14, 2009, visited the shrine of Mallam Tetteh at 8am upon appointment to come for spiritual cleansing at the shrine.

The prosecution said when Rita went to the shrine, Mallam Tetteh killed her around 10am and left the body there till the early morning of Sunday, November 15, when he wrapped it in his bed sheet and put it on his motorbike with the intention of disposing it of at Mile 50, a suburb of Koforidua.

According to the prosecution, as Mallam Tetteh was carrying the body of Rita on his motorbike around 12.50am, the chief of Ahwerase, Nana Ansah Akoto Semanhyia II, who was travelling with two other friends from Akropong-Akwapim to Suhum at the time, spotted Mallam on his motorbike with the body of Rita ahead of them.

When they saw Mallam Tetteh, they suspected he had stolen a goat and gave him a chase until they caught up with him and realised it was a human being wrapped in a bed sheet tied to the motorbike.

When they realized it was a human body that the Mallam was carrying, they accosted him and tried to arrest him but he managed to escape, abandoning the body and his motorbike.

The prosecution explained that Mallam Tetteh escaped to clean the traces of blood in his house but upon further alarm, he was arrested by a group of people who nearly lynched him before handing him over to the police.

According to the prosecution, Mallam Tetteh had wanted to send the body of Rita to Osabene at Mile 50 where she lived with her boyfriend, one Samuel Kwasi Asamani, to avoid any trace of him being Rita's killer.

The police said when Mallam Tetteh was arrested, he admitted that Rita came to his shrine for spiritual consultation but denied killing her.

He rather said his landlord, Derek Ameyaw, and one Martin who were at home at the time of the murder, were the ones who killed Rita because she had complained to him that the landlord had been harassing her for love.

The landlord had also completely denied knowing Rita as the prosecution indicated.

When the police went to the crime scene, they saw a knife, a hammer, a dress of the deceased with blood stains, the mobile phone of the deceased and her wristwatch in the fetish priest's home.

The police also found blood-stained pair of trousers around the house which the accused admitted he was wearing before and also a sponge which the police suspected was used to clean the blood stains in his room.

According to the prosecution, the deceased had a deep cut on the neck, fractures on the head, bruises and signs of violence on her when the body was recovered.

From Thomas Fosu Jnr, Koforidua