Why did Anas employ Ahmed Hussein-Suale?

General News on Wednesday, January 30, 2019

Source: Graphic.com.gh

2019-01-30

Anas Aremeyaw, Ace's investigative journalist, revealed the circumstances that led him to employ his colleague Ahmed Hussein-Suale, who was murdered on January 16 in Accra.

According to the BBC, Hussein-Suale grew up among eight brothers and sisters in Wulensi, a small town in northern Ghana, where he distinguished himself by his keen interest in politics. At 18, he moved to Accra to study political science at the University of Ghana, where he first met Anas.

Anas had already made a name as a journalist under cover and Tiger Eye was a novice team. Hussein-Suale was looking for him in the same way as several other employees of Tiger Eye, asking him to check until someone can tell him: it's the man known as the name of Anas. Anas reacted as he did to all potential recruits: he gave him a test: he went to Tema, north of Accra, and reported an article on the cocaine. Hussein-Suale went to Tema and quickly failed. He blew up his blanket and stopped himself. "He has not lived up to my expectations," said Anas during a meeting with the BBC last week. "And that was it."

But Hussein-Suale wrote Anas a long letter explaining why he should be given another chance. "Then I gave him another chance," said Anas. "And from that day, he excelled from one survey to the next."

The first big story of Hussein-Suale took place in 2013, when he traveled with Anas in northern Ghana to denounce the witch acts behind the poisoning of children – often children with disabilities – that we believe possessed by evil spirits. In a refined style typical of the Tiger Eye style, the team arranged for witch "concoctors" to visit a family home with a supposedly possessed child. While the men preparing the poison were preparing their poison, the team exchanged the baby for a prosthetic baby. When the men came back and seized the fake baby, the police rushed.

The film – Spirit Child – was broadcast internationally on Al Jazeera. Hussein-Suale, then 24, impressed Anas with her pragmatism, not hesitating to enter the witch's sanctuary. "The average African is spiritually afraid of traditions and gods," said Anas. "But Ahmed has always been daring."

His natural behavior was the opposite. He was silent and unpretentious, at a fault. "You might neglect it at first," said Sammy Darko, Tiger Eye's attorney, "but that made him an ideal candidate for investigative journalism." He was also scrupulously attentive and diligent. He became known as "the encyclopedia of the team" for his detailed knowledge of each project, and later as "spiritual leader" for his habit of leading a prayer before the infiltration operations.

His booth in the Tiger Eye offices had notes and documents from various surveys stacked on the desk and stuck to the walls. "He was going out quietly and doing a lot of background work," said a fellow investigator, "so that when we come to this story, we know exactly what we were doing." But he also had a playful sequence. "I got angry with him once," recalls Seamus Mirodan, director of Spirit Child. "One of the villagers offered him as a gift a guinea fowl that has just been slaughtered.It put it in my tripod bag and it's just collapsed inside the bag. . "

In 2015, Hussein-Suale took the lead in a story that would rock Ghana and propel Tiger Eye into the limelight. "Ghana in the Eyes of God" – a secret three-hour epic based on hundreds of hours of secret filming – revealed widespread corruption in the Ghanaian judiciary, showing judges and law officers accepting bribes de-wine to influence business.

More than 30 judges and 170 judicial officers were involved. Seven of the 12 judges of the country's Supreme Court have been suspended. The film was presented to 6,500 people during four screenings at the Accra International Conference Center and resulted in a stalemate in the streets of the capital.

For all fans of Tiger Eye, not everyone appreciated the methods of the team. They faced trapping charges. "It's wrong to induce someone to seduce by anything lucrative, a lot of money or anything, and then tell yourself that the person is corrupt," said Charles Bentum, lawyer of several judges involved in the briefing. "You can not exonerate the stimulant and sentence the victim."

The judicial history has made Anas famous in Ghana. Behind the scenes, Hussein-Suale's combination of diligence and courage impressed his boss; he became the right arm of Anas. In early 2018, Anas asked Hussein-Suale to accompany him to Malawi for a bleak story about the "muti" – the practice of harvesting parts of the human body for chance rituals – that's why it's all over the place. a young Malawian journalist, Henry Mhango, had brought them. They would collaborate on the story with the BBC. "I chose Hussein-Suale because I knew he had the ability to withstand shocks," said Anas.