No Show! �Months After Immigration Officer Petitioned Minister Over Murder Allegations

Months after an Assistant Controller of the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS), Edward Kofi Owusu, petitioned the Minister of Interior, Kwesi Ahwoi, that he had no knowledge of the murder of Immigration Control Officer (ICO) Kofi Quist Defor, as he was being accused him of, there has not been any action on his petition. Narrating his ordeals, he said was arrested on January 7th, 2014, at his residence at GIMPA in the course of preparing for end of semester exams after receiving a phone call by Assistant Director of Immigration (ADI) Bonaventure Agortimevor under the pretext that Dr. Wiredu needed him to discuss a memo he (Edward) submitted on some illegal immigrants which landed him at the Police Headquarters in Accra. Mr. Owusu, a law student at GIMPA was accused of murder together with a junior officer (name unknown) and was informed that they were under investigation which the former insisted he knew nothing about the hapless killing of Mr. Defor. A paper was, he said, was brought to him which termed �threatening note� found in the bag of the deceased which they suspected was linked to him and read; "Blowplast your man is arrogant and does not respect in the office because he thinks he is schooling. He has taken over all the immigration work. We are there sending back to you the passports you have forwarded to the Processing Unit so that you resubmit because we do not want to punish your people. This is just the beginning of the battle with Quist". Blowplast Company is the producer of Belaqua mineral water. He denied the allegation and reminded the interrogators that he was the Head of the Enforcement Unit of the Service ordering the daily inspection of the thousands of expatriate companies in Accra and was therefore unthinkable that he would reduce himself to serving as an errand boy for one company. "I again reminded them that I am an Assistant Controller (Superintendent rank as in police) and Kofi Quist is an ICO that is (corporal) and questioned what at all could be the motivation for killing such a junior officer that under normal scheme of things has no link with me", he stated. Giving reasons of his suspicion, he said "after considering a number of factors including circumstances surrounding my bizarre transfer as the Chief State Officer to the Enforcement Unit, the maltreatment I received soon after the transfer, his conduct during my ordeal at the police, the manner in which he engineered the publication when there was no prima facie case to link me to the murder of Kofi Quist and many more, then I have no doubts that Ag. Director of Immigration is behind it all." Mr. Owusu continued that eight days after the shameful report in the Daily Graphic was published to tarnish his hard won reputation in the Service, the Director was still relentless in pursuing him. He recalled that on 22nd of April 2014, the Director ordered him to answer a charge that he was alleged to have invited a Lebanese suspect to his house, harassed and detained his passport illegally. In respect to his petition, he noted the over four-months-old allegation is having very dire ramifications for him. That "It is restricting my movements and is psychologically affecting my person. I want to be charged at the law courts or be cleared of the charges so that I can regain my freedom". He is therefore appealing to the Minister to cause the cessation of the continuous harassments, especially at work and a retraction of the story in the same medium of Daily Graphic be given the same prominence to exonerate him. �An unqualified apology from the plotters and any other reliefs that you (the Minister) deem fit to restore my reputation and damaged image", he said. It would be recalled that the 8th of January, 2014 edition of the Daily Graphic reported that two immigration officers were arrested in connection with the murder of their colleague. Stay tuned