Police searching for Editor

Accra, Nov. 9, GNA - The Police on Wednesday said investigations had begun to establish the whereabouts and alleged attack on Mr Jojo Bruce Quansah, Editor of the 'Ghana Palaver', an Accra based private newspaper, who has been reported missing.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Mr Kwesi Ofori of the Police Public Affairs Directorate said the Police could not confirm that Mr Quansah had been attacked. "It is not true that the Director General of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Deputy Commissioner of Police Mr David Asante Appeatu had confirmed Mr Quansah's attack.

In fact Mr Apeatu had not granted any interview to any journalist on the issue," ASP Ofori declared.

Mr Ofori said; "so far our investigative machinery is in motion to get Mr Quansah to tell his side of the story".

He advised the media to desist from fabricating issues that had not been confirmed by the Police.

Mr Ofori, therefore, urged the media to contact the Police Public Affairs Directorate for any clarification on the matter. He, however, confirmed the report lodged at the CID Headquarters by Mr Kwamena Ahwoi, a leading member of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), that Mr Quansah had not been seen since yesterday (Tuesday) morning.

The Police said they had been informed that the Editor had earlier in the day been seen with bloodstains in his clothes. Mr Quansah has been in the news of late following heavy fines slapped on him for libel.

Last Friday publishers of the newspaper launched "The Save the Ghana Palaver Fund" to enable it to pay a two billion-cedi court fine slapped on it.

Mr Quansah, Managing Editor, accompanied by his Deputy, Mr Ekow Essuman launched the fund in Accra to solicit financial assistance from the general public to pay the damages to save the paper from being closed down.

"The 'Ghana Palaver' is in distress. It has a hangman's noose around its neck, set on the road to its Calvary. We are to pay two billion cedis, as we stand here, or get The Ghana Palaver closed down," Mr Quansah said.

"Our destiny now lies in the hands of Ghanaians, who cherish the truth, who want to read the other side of the story and Ghanaians, who want to defend our democratic values, to come to the aid of the 'Ghana Palaver'...," he said.

According to the Managing Editor, the fines were damages slapped on the paper by the court to be paid to Mr George Kufuor, a relation of President John Agyekum Kufuor and Mr Hackman Owusu-Agyemang, Minister of Works and Housing.

He said in the case of Mr Kufuor, who is to be paid 440 million cedis as damages the Paper's cited him in a story as being member of the Board of Directors of a transport company, "Easy Link" the arrival of whose fleet of buses, "turned the law on the right-hand drive upside down".

In the case of Mr Owusu-Agyemang, who is also to be paid 1.5 billion cedis in damages, Mr Quansah said it published a story about the operations of the Minister's non-governmental organisation, which had earlier appeared on the Internet and published by "The Chronicle" on its front page.