A Security Analyst, Emmanuel Kotin, suspects that some Senior Officers in the Ghana Police Service are deeply involved in the crimes that have been committed by the Junior Police Officers who have been interdicted in the recent robberies in the country.
He believes these young officers could not just be so confident to get involved in such crimes if not for the supervision of some Senior officers in the service. These comments come after the first two suspects who were interdicted for their involvement in the bullion van robberies were announced dead after a police raid recently at Borteyman in Ashaiman.
He said “I am bound to believe that if you look at the junior officers involved, they are all constables except one who is a corporal. They cannot just be bold enough to do what they are doing if they don’t have a bigger person up there looking at them. That is what I suspect”.
Many people have raised concerns about the two suspected police officers’ death as to how they got caught up in a cross fire when they were under arrest.
For this, Mr Kotin added “Look, you have two suspects who are your big fish and they were kept for over 24 hours tortured before they confessed. They did not just confess ordinarily. It means that these are hardened people who were prepared to go any length to cancel and cover their colleagues.
Speaking during the ‘Bug Issue’ on Citi Fm today, Mr Kotin questions why the police went to the scene with the suspects: “Now, why would you have to take two of the suspects to the (raid) scene? Look, you could just take one suspect into a different location and the one in another different location. And let each of them in a separate location tell you the location of the people. Not necessarily taking you there and see that are they all telling you the truth or otherwise. If you are convinced that the object is the same. You do a swoop, and you don’t take the suspects along with you”.
The Executive Director of Africa Center for Security and Counterterrorism went on to speak for the suspects who have now become ‘victims’. He believe the right of the suspects was not protected in this situation.
“We are in a democracy and I think that we are playing with the rights of citizens. Being a suspect does not mean you are guilty of the crime until proven otherwise. So the rights of these people ought to have been respected”.
Therefore, the Security Analyst is calling for a public inquiry in the whole event to clarify issues and get the due compensation these victims deserve.
“I feel that an independent public inquiry will unravel all of these things and compensations duly paid to these two suspects. For me I would say they are victims now until a court of competent jurisdiction have proven them guilty”.
