Galamsey Queen Holds Ghana Card

Aisha Huang

DETAILS HAVE emerged about how En Huang, popularly known as Aisha Huang, a Chinese arrested in Ghana over illegal mining, also known as galamsey, obtained the Ghana Card upon her re-entry into Ghana in February this year.

A copy of her Non-Citizen Ghana Card sighted by this paper indicates that the illegal mining kingpin, often referred to as ‘Galamsey Queen’, obtained the card in February 2022 in Accra under the name Huang En.

Aisha Huang, whose initial arrest and subsequent trial dominated news headlines between 2017 and 2018, for her involvement in illegal mining at Bepotenten in the Amansie West District of the Ashanti Region, was deported on December 19, 2018, after her trial was discontinued by the Office of the Attorney General.

In spite of her future entry into the country being restricted by the Comptroller-General of the Ghana Immigration Service, in accordance with Immigration Act 2000 (Act 573), she managed to sneak back into the country from Togo through an unapproved route along the Aflao stretch of the Ghana/Togo border.

This was after she managed to obtain a Togolese Visa under a new name Ruixia Huang, with a passport number EE9994609 which was issued at Fujian in China on January 14, 2019.

Aisha Huang, after her illegal re-entry into Ghana, managed to obtain a Non-Citizen Ghana Card with Huang as her surname and En as her first name, the same name she was known by during her first stay in Ghana before her repatriation.

Her Ghana Card has July 7, 1986, as her date of birth, 1.6 metres as her height, with a document number AW2203500 and February 26, 2023 as its expiry date. Her personal ID Number is omitted for security reasons.

The Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) has indicated that on September 2, 2022, a joint team of personnel from their Intelligence Section, the Defence Intelligence and National Intelligence Bureau arrested Ruixia Huang and three other Chinese nationals at their hideout at Ahodwo, a suburb of Kumasi in the Ashanti Region.

Aisha Huang claimed to have entered the country on August 31, 2022, from Togo through an unapproved route along the Aflao stretch of the Ghana/Togo border.

She was arrested in a facility where she sells mining related equipment, and is believed to have acquired a new passport issued on January 14, 2019 at Fujian with a different name, Ruixia Huang, a GIS statement pointed out.

Aisha Huang and three other Chinese nationals were dragged before an Accra Circuit Court on Monday for their alleged involvement in illegal mining in the Ashanti Region, and they were remanded by the court to reappear on September 14, 2022.

AG Requests Docket

Meanwhile, the Attorney General, Godfred Yeboah Dame, has requested for the new docket on Aisha Huang, regarding the offences she is suspected to have recently committed.

“The AG will also re-initiate prosecution in respect of the old offences for which she was standing trial before her deportation in 2018,” the Attorney General said in a statement on his Office’s official Twitter handle.

“There shall be a full prosecution for her alleged new and past offences,” the statement added.

BY Gibril Abdul Razak

 

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