Police will dare not go to some places in Ashaiman to arrest criminals – Army Chief justifies Ashaiman swoop

The Director General in charge of Public Affairs of the Ghana Armed Forces, Brigadier General Eric Aggrey Quarshie, has explained why the army conducted a swoop in Ashaiman after the murder of a soldier, Sherrif Imoro.

According to him, the decision to raid Ashaiman was taken because of a number of activities that had taken place in the area.

Brigadier General Quarshie, who made these remarks at the Annual General Meeting and National Public Relations and Communication Summit, added that some communities in Ashaiman had become so notorious that the Ghana Police Service would not venture to arrest criminals there.

"Whatever happened in Ashaiman was not something [that] somebody woke up one morning and said, let us go to Ashaiman. So many things had taken place, and our soldier's death became like the last straw that broke the camel's back.

"Ashaiman is a place where there are certain sections that even the police cannot go and effect arrests; they won't dare. Somebody commits a crime, and you can't go there or even arrest the person, and so we were tracking certain events," he said.

The March 7 military swoop

Dozens of military officers stormed Ashaiman in the operation that saw some soldiers entering the town in trucks, with an armoured car plus a helicopter hovering over the town.

The exercise is said to be in response to the gruesome murder of a young soldier, Trooper Sherrif Imoro, by some unidentified persons on Saturday, March 4, 2023.

Videos of the invasion shared across social media show various forms of assault being meted on residents by the rampaging officers who subjected some of the residents to severe beatings.

In a statement released in the early hours of March 8, the Ghana Armed Forces admitted authorizing the swoop, which led to the arrest of 184 people as well as the seizure of suspected illegal drugs.

In the said statement, they also acknowledged excesses may have resulted in the swoop but failed to apologize for or commit to conducting a probe on same.

All suspects have since been released without charge, while the police have arrested six people for their alleged roles in the death of Sherrif Imoro.

Watch Brigadier General Quarshie's remarks in the video below:

You can also watch this episode of People & Places here:



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