Speaking on the recent operation in Ashaiman by the armed forces following the murder of the 21-year-old soldier, Imoro Sherrif, Brigadier General Eric Aggrey-Quarshie said Ghanaians were happy with our operation.
He made this known at the Annual General Meeting and National Public Relations and Communication Summit of the Institute of Public Relations (IPR), Ghana, held at Kwahu-Nkwatia in the Eastern Region on the theme: 'Staying Credible Through Rough Patches', and stated that the soldiers did what they did because Ashaiman has gained notoriety as a den for criminals.
According to him, "whatever happened in Ashaiman was not something somebody woke up one morning and said let us go to Asahiman, so many things are taking place and our soldier dying became like the last straw that broke the camel's back."
"Ashaiman, there are still sections that the Police cannot go and effect an arrest, they won’t dare. Somebody commits a crime and you can't go there to even arrest the person and so we were tracking the event," he added.
The Police after a week of sustained intelligence-led operations arrested six persons at different dates and various locations within Ashaiman and its environs for their suspected involvement in the murder of Imoro Sherrif.
After almost a week of painstaking intelligence-led operations, on March 9, the police arrested suspects Safianu Musah alias Dayorgu and Ibrahim Abdul Rakib at their hideouts in Ashaiman.
Two other suspects, Samuel Tetteh alias Wiper and Abubakar Sadick alias Birdman were arrested at their hideouts on March 10, 2023.
Two additional suspects, Yussif Mohammed, and Abdul Gafaru Abdul Karim were arrested on March 11 and 12, 2023, respectively.
Further investigation has established that suspects Samuel Tetteh and Abubakar Sadick at about 1:45 am on March 4, 2023, attacked the deceased at Taifa Ashiaman in an attempt to rob him of his phone and a backpack.
The deceased, however, resisted and struggled with the suspects. During the struggle, suspect Samuel Tetteh pulled out a knife and stabbed the deceased in the arm, snatched his phone, and bolted leaving the deceased with the knife stuck in his arm.
A postmortem examination was performed on the deceased’s body on March 8, 2023, after which the pathologist gave the verbal cause of death as exsanguination and laceration of major vessels of the left arm consistent with the stabbed injury.
Investigations also revealed that suspects Samuel Tetteh and Abubakar Sadick sold the phone which they had robbed from the deceased to suspect Ibrahim Abdul Rakib who later sold it to suspect Safianu Musah.
Suspect Safianu Musah is being evasive as to the whereabouts of the phone and claims to have sold it to suspect Yussif Mohammed and later to suspect Abdul Gafaru Abdul Karim.
Both suspects have been arrested and are assisting in the investigation to recover the phone.