National security has still not found any alleged weapons in the home of a NDC politician

General News on Thursday, February 14, 2019

Source: Myjoyonline.com

2019-02-14

The Minister of National Security, Albert Kan-Dapaah, said that despite the suspicions of his ministry regarding the storage of weapons in the house of an opposition politician, no weapon was found.

"They obviously took them away," said the minister, who confided to Delali Kwasi Brempong, NDC's parliamentary candidate in the recent Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election in the Greater Accra Region.

This by-election was bloody: six of them were hospitalized and some were shot and wounded. An inquiry commission looked into the incident, which attracted widespread condemnation from the government.

Albert Kan-Dapaah said in turn that many masked men, seen near a polling station in La Bawaleshie, a district of the constituency, had not come there for security reasons election.

He disputes the concerns that the presence of these masked men armed with weapons could not have aroused fear and panic in the by-election.

He also claimed that the gunshots heard during the polls were warning shots that did no harm to anyone and that he had suggested that the firearm causing injuries had was taken from the house and apparently contained ammunition.

The NDC parliamentary candidate at the by-election vehemently denied keeping the weapons at home.

A third witness at the Osu Castle hearing in Accra, the state's Minister of National Security, Bryan Acheampong, said that although about sixty security officials approached the building, they did not search after receiving shots from the inside of the house.

"Nothing should have prevented them from entering," he told the commissioners. Insisting that they have not completed their weapons search mission.

Instead, they arrested nine people in front of the building and aborted the mission, he said.

The commission's lawyers who questioned the witness found it curious that 60 men were arresting nine people in front of a house believed to contain weapons, and then canceled the mission.

"It's very very possible," said the state minister.

The minister would not call the so-called confirmation and weapons recovery mission a failure. He explained that men took the "best decision" given the situation on the ground.

But left to him, "they should have come in and finished their mission."

Bryan Acheampong said to be asked "a thousand times in a week" why no weapon had been recovered from the site.