Court remands five ritual murder suspects

Aflao, (V/R) Sept. 10, GNA - A 28 year-old farmer, suspected of conniving with four others in murdering his seven-year-old daughter, Rose Dekpey, at Klikor, near Agbozume, for ritual purposes, has on Friday appeared before an Aflao circuit court on provisional charges of conspiracy and murder.

Also in the dock with James Dekpey, were his relatives Kwabla Dekpey and Emmanuel Kundo Dekpey, also farmers and all natives of Glidzi, a farming community near Klikor, in the Ketu District. The others were Nelson Mandela Akli, 38, a building contractor, the architect of the act and his brother Christian Akli, 26, a mason, also natives of Glidzi, but both based at Ashiaman, near Tema. Their pleas were not taken. The court, presided over by Group Captain Martin Obeng-Ntim (rtd.), remanded the five in police custody to be brought before the court again on Friday, September 23, this year. Police Chief Inspector Kofi Frimpong of Aflao told the court that Mandela visited Glidzi with Christian on August 29, this year and told the victim's father in the presence of the others that he could make them become wealthy through human blood.

According to him, James agreed to Mandela's demand to donate his daughter, being his only child, who he had through wedlock and who was then residing with her grandmother at another part of Glidzi, for the purpose.

At 10 a.m. on Saturday, September 3, James went for the victim in the absence of her grandmother, to a spot in the bush near Satsimadza, a former refugee camp near Agozume, on the Aflao-Acrra Highway, where the others were in ambush, waiting as arranged. On arrival, they laid the girl on the ground, her father pressed her arms on the ground with Kwabla, Emmanuel and Christian holding the legs, while Mandela slit her throat with a cutlass supplied by the victim's father, and they then threw the body away at a different spot.

Prosecution said the police visited the scene and found the body of the little girl with its throat slit after some boys hunting birds in the bush found the body, and investigations led to the arrest of the victim's father.

According to him, the victim's father confirmed and narrated the chronology of the act to police, leading to the arrest of the others, including Kwabla and Emmanuel, who initially went into hiding.

Prosecution said when police visited the murder scene, no blood traces were found, suggesting that the blood that oozed during the act, might have been collected into a container. The victim's body is at the Ketu District Hospital morgue at Aflao pending autopsy.