Chronicle reporter under death threat

A staff reporter of The Chronicle, Othello Barnabas Garblah, on Thursday received a series of death threats on his life via his cellular phone in relation to a series of stories the paper had ran on the alleged criminal business activities of Captain Hinisch Clishzilsch Bilson, the investor dud cheque scandal.

Garblah said the caller whose voice he recognized as Capt. Bilson, told him on the phone that, “We will kill you and use acid on your body and nobody is going to recognize you.”

He said the call came around 3:33 pm at the time he was conducting an interview with the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Public Relations Officer, Mr. Afari in Accra.

According to the reporter, he immediately beckoned Mr. Afari to listen to the threats the caller was issuing.

He said after Mr. Afari listened for a while, he informed the reporter that he could not get the person clearly and the line went off.

Garblah said he told Mr. Afari who the caller was and what he had said but Afari told him the caller was just intimidating him and that he should not worry because “nobody wanting to kill you would call to inform you about it.”

However, at about 6:38 pm, the same day, Garblah said he had received a similar call from the same person he identified as Capt. Bilson, who this time added, “We know your movements and know your family members and we are going to kill you and cut your body into pieces; it is just a matter of time.”

Garblah said after the caller had hung up, he called his boss, the editor of The Chronicle, Mr. Kojo Omaboe to inform him about the second threat and who he thought was the source of it.

He said Mr. Omaboe then cautioned him to lodge a formal complaint with the police because the threats could not be taken lightly.

Garblah on Friday morning filed a formal complaint at the Kotobabi Police station in the presence of this reporter and wrote a statement.

Readers would recall that The Chronicle has ran a series of stories on Capt. Bilson's alleged criminal business activities which were being investigated by the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI).

Bilson, who claimed to be an investor from the Oklahoma State in the US and had established an airline in the country, is alleged to have issued series of dud cheques to business people he had been dealing with. The Airline itself does not exist, according to sources at the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority.