Gloria A. Akuffo
The Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Gloria A. Akuffo, has taken exception to the handling of the case of kidnapping of the three Takoradi girls by the security agencies.
The Attorney-General took exception to the disclosure by COP/Ms. Maame Yaa Tiwaa Addo-Danquah, the Director-General of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service, close to a month that her outfit knows the whereabouts of the kidnapped girls.
The Attorney General told Joy FM, an Accra-based radio station, that the disclosure could further endanger the lives of the girls.
She said it was wrong for the investigating authorities to make that announcement, noting that when those keeping the girls know their whereabouts are known they would change the location.
“That signals those who have them and they could change their location,” she told the radio station.
She went on “you could even endanger their lives…and I find it even regrettable that the information went out that they have been found.”
During the April 2 press conference hosted by the CID, COP Tiwaa left nobody in doubt about the investigators being on top of the security jigsaw puzzle with her information.
With many days elapsing, questions began pouring in concerning the authenticity of her claim.
Her refusal to address concerns of journalists at the conference compounded agitated minds at the time.
At the end, she was at the receiving end of a series of flaks from both the media and general public.
“We know where the girls are, they are safe … very soon they will be brought back home,” she claimed.
They are not yet home though and the anxiety of the parents of the girls and indeed the general public is nearing the end of the dashboard.
The parents of the girls charged on the CID for not disclosing details about the status of their daughters before going public in the manner they did.
Ruth Quayson, Priscilla Blessing Bentum and Priscilla Koranchie were kidnapped between August 2018 and January 2019. Their story has so far attracted a national conversation with sometimes dramatic twists and turns.
By A.R. Gomda