body-container-line-1
28.04.2007 General News

Prison authorities discover cocaine in prison

28.04.2007 LISTEN
By The Mirror

Officials of the Winneba Prisons have stumbled upon a ciga¬rette lighter stuffed with cocaine and concealed in kenkey intended to be used in the prison by two remand prisoners.

The two prisoners, Suwakatu Issah and Roland Osabutey, are, however, counter-accusing each other of being the owner of the undisclosed number of balls of kenkey found among their belongings during a search conducted on them by the prison officials prior to admitting them in the prison.

Consequently the officer-in-charge of the prisons, Chief Superintendent Jacob Tagoe, has requested the Kasoa Police Commander to release the Court Warrant Officer (CWO) to help the prison officials in their investigations into how the two remand prisoners came by the stuff.

Issah and Osabutey had been arraigned before the Beraku court on charges of possessing narcotic drugs; the former with cocaine - and the latter with marijuana - for which their pleas were not taken and were remanded in prison custody to enable the police complete their findings.

They were billed to appear again before the court on May 14, 2007 and were escorted to the Kasoa police cells to be sent to the Winneba prisons the following day by the CWO as the day, April 16, was far spent.

On April 17, however, after the CWO had handed over the remand prisoners to the prison officials at Winneba and left for his Kasoa station, the cocaine-filled lighter was found in the kenkey among their belongings.

Chief Inspector Helena Aidoo informed the court presided over by Mr C.A. Wilson that on April 5, this year at about 3:30 pm a police-cum-military patrol team was on a check duty at Amanfra-junction when they spotted a taxi with registration number GW 80 U with two persons, Suwakatu and a woman on board.

A military camouflage uniform being worn by Suwakatu at the time caught the attention of the team which quizzed him about it. His behaviour raised the team's suspicion the more and therefore, decided to conduct a search on him, only to uncover 60 wrappers of a substance suspected to be cocaine on him.

When he was sent to the Kasoa police station for interrogation, Suwakatu could not give any tangible explanation as to how he came by the substance.

On Osabutey's case, the policewoman stated that Osabutey's victims are a couple, Mr and Mrs Appiah Sylvester from whose room the accused entered and stole two cell phones and cash all amounting to 13.7 million cedis at Kasoa.

According to Chief Inspector Aidoo around 1am on April 7 this year, Osabutey broke into the couple's room and stole the phones and cash when they were asleep.

The prosecutor said Osabutey, a Kasoa-based welder, was suspected to have blown some sleep-inducing chemical on the sleeping couple that enabled him to steal their phones from under their pillows.

She said that an informant blew the whistle to the couple after the theft, thereby prompting the couple to report to the police. It was his eventual arrest followed by a search in his room which revealed the leaves under his bed.

Source: The Mirror

body-container-line