BBC Reports: The Life and Death of Ahmed Hussein-Suale

General News on Wednesday, January 30, 2019

Source: bbc.com

2019-01-30

On 18 January, Ahmed Hussein-Suale, a Ghanaian investigative journalist who collaborated with the BBC, was shot dead near his family's home in Accra. The Ghanaian police think that he was murdered because of his work.

At first the shots looked like firecrackers and Unus Alhbadan was wondering why someone had them off so long after Christmas.

It was almost midnight in Madina, a suburb of the Ghanaian capital Accra. Alhbadan's family was sitting together and chatting in front of the family home, as they often did late in the night. His brother, Ahmed Hussein-Suale, had just left to see a sick nephew. When the sound of the firecrackers stopped and the ordinary noise of the neighborhood calmed down, Alhbadan turned his attention to his family and he no longer rethought these sounds until that a man would come to him shouting that his brother was dead.

One hundred meters from the road, Hussein-Suale, 31, was slumped in the driver's seat of his blue and dusty BMW, with bullets in his chest and neck. Eyewitnesses said that he had been killed by two men who had opened fire on the car while she was slowing down for a crossover. The first bullet hit Hussein-Suale around the neck and the car accelerated, hitting a storefront. One of the gunmen calmly approached the driver's side and fired two shots through the broken window directly on Hussein-Suale's chest. Then he turned to those who were watching, smiled and raised a finger to his lips.

Three witnesses to the crime who live nearby told the BBC that they saw the men hanging around the crossroads several times during the week preceding the murder – two unknown faces in a known neighborhood. The men, one tall and well built, the other small and nervous, leaned on their motorbikes or talked with neighbors to pbad the time. They bought alcohol at a store and helped a man to carry buckets of water. A neighbor said that they seemed suspicious. Another said that she thought she was a thief.

But nothing was stolen from Hussein-Suale and no one near him believed that he was a random target. He was an investigative journalist whose secret reports had exposed traffickers, murderers, corrupt officials and high court judges. He worked with Tiger Eye, a highly secretive team led by one of Africa's most famous undercover journalists, Anas Aremeyaw Anas. In Ghana and beyond, the anonymous and daring reports from the team have made them modern folk heroes. And that made them enemies.

When Tiger Eye released its latest survey, which reveals widespread corruption in African football, Ghanaian MP Kennedy Agyapong began a campaign of hostility against the team, saying that he was offended by his infiltration methods. He has publicly called for Anas to be hanged. A few weeks after the screening of the film last June, he used his own television channel to attack Hussein-Suale and reveal the journalist's best-kept secret, his face.

"It's him," said Agyapong, as images of Hussein-Suale appeared on the screen. "Her other picture is there too, do it big."

Agyapong revealed the name of Hussein-Suale and the neighborhood in which he lived. "If you meet him somewhere, slap him … beat him," he said, looking at the goal. "Whatever happens, I will pay."

Anas Aremeyaw Anas, disguised, prays alongside his colleagues and friends at the funeral of Hussein-Suale

Nobody expected the first recorded murder of a journalist in 2019 to occur in Ghana.

In much of Africa, authoritarian regimes have effectively stifled the free press. But in a handful of less repressive countries, stubborn young journalists are taking power seriously and advancing the culture of investigative reporting. Ghana is at the top of the list. Last year, the country was ranked first among African countries in Reporters Without Borders' annual index of press freedom. Globally, it ranks 23rd out of 180 countries, far ahead of the United Kingdom (40th) and the United States (45th).

Anas and his team are the most prominent journalists in the country. Anas was greeted by the country's president, Nana Akufo-Addo, and by President Barack Obama, who said he saw the spirit of democracy "in the shoes of brave journalists like Anas Aremeyaw Anas, who risked his life to reveal the truth ". During her 20 years of undercover journalism, Anas has portrayed herself as an investor in high heels and lipstick. worked as a janitor in a brothel; he is sent to prison; and hidden in a false rock at the edge of the road. In public, he wears a striking disguise – a hat with a veil of multicolored beads hanging in front of his face. In Ghana, it has become a symbol of resistance to corruption, graffiti on the walls around the capital.

But behind the mask, there is not only the face of Anas. There is a team of highly qualified investigative journalists who put their lives in danger to tell stories, and of which Hussein-Suale was the leader among them – the team leader chosen by Anas.

Hussein-Suale grew up among his 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 new 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 did not live up to my expectations," said Anas, "and that was all."

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

"Anas look, do what's right" – graffiti in the capital, Accra

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." Hussein-Suale put it in Mirodan's tripod bag and the entrails spread inside.

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.

Everyone did not appreciate the methods of Tiger Eye. The team was accused of being caught in the trap. "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."

Tiger Eye's undercover investigations have been screened in theaters across Ghana

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. "I chose Hussein-Suale because I knew he had the ability to withstand shocks," said Anas.

But in Malawi, they would have problems that would exceed anything Hussein-Suale had known. Mhango had arranged a meeting in the countryside with two men who had declared that they would kill children for their body parts. In the dark, Hussein-Suale, Anas, Mhango and producer Darius Barzargan surrendered with men on the outskirts of a village to negotiate.

But the villagers had noticed unknown men who met among the trees and suspected them of being child murderers. They attacked the team, first with their feet and their fists, then with stones. The costume of Anas was cut on the back with a knife. Hidden cameras continued to record as attacks intensified. "I'm here, I'm here, let me hold you," Anas said softly to Hussein-Suale. Then: "They will kill us."

They were rescued by a group of brave villagers who stood between the team and the attackers and helped them reach the village chief's house. The crowd tried to force the door and Mhango, during his first job infiltrating, was shaking. Hussein-Suale was sitting next to him. "He told me to forget my environment and to be strong," recalls Mhango. "He said:" Henry, these are the incidents that encourage us to do more, because our job is to fight the evil. "

Finally, with the help of the small group of villagers, they succeeded and Anas and Hussein-Suale returned to Ghana. But Hussein-Suale stayed in touch with Mhango, coaching him on long phone calls the following year.

"He told me stories about Ghana and Malawi, and he had a huge impact on my career," said Mhango. "His death is not only a loss for Ghana, it is a loss for all of Africa.He was a journalist for Africa."

Shortly after the return of the Malawi team, Tiger Eye would produce a story that would make headlines across the continent and beyond. "Number 12" was an investigation into corruption in football refereeing, and Hussein-Suale again took the lead. Ghana, referee after referee, has accepted cash gifts from Tiger Eye underground journalists. By the time the investigation was over, nearly 100 African football officials had accepted money, including a Kenyan referee who was scheduled to officiate at the next World Cup.

The investigation culminated in a barrage of bans and resignations. Kwesi Nyantakyi, head of the Ghana Football Federation and a member of the FIFA Elite Council, was at the top of the list. Mr Nyantakyi went to Dubai for what he thought was a meeting with a sheikh wanting to invest in Ghanaian football. When he sat in a hotel room in front of "SA Sheikh Hammad Al Thani" and put $ 65,000 cash in a black plastic bag, he absolutely could not know that the silent man who had organized the meeting was Ahmed Hussein-Suale.

Mr Nyantakyi was banned from football for life and the survey delighted Ghanaian football fans unhappy with the corruption that paralyzed the sport. It has also angered some of the most powerful people in Ghana. Kennedy Agyapong, a ruling party deputy, blamed the group, saying it was offended by the way they conducted the investigations. He obtained the name and location of Hussein-Suale and made them public. Tiger Eye was forced to activate security protocols: members left Accra; the main offices have been abandoned and remain largely unused; and Hussein-Suale traveled north, returning periodically to the capital.

When his family viewed the pictures of Agyapong's speech, they asked Hussein-Suale to leave Ghana entirely, but he resisted. "He was of the opinion that he did nothing wrong, that he did what he did to save the nation, so why should he leave?" said Alhbadan.

Anas also asked Hussein-Suale to sit in the background in the middle of the advertisement. Reluctantly, he agreed to do so and eventually agreed to stay a little away from home. But it was against his character. He pushed Anas to bring him back to the investigation and he started to return to Madina. He preferred to pray at his usual mosque. He felt safe in his home neighborhood. "You could compare that to a gangster movie," said Tiger Eye's lawyer, Sammy Darko. "The gangster always feels safe in his neighborhood because his friends and family surround him."

But Ahmed was not a gangster. He was a journalist, son, husband and father of three young children. His badbadination shocked Ghana and echoed beyond its borders, resulting in the condemnation of President Akufo-Addo and the UN. Freedom of the press activists say they fear a cooling effect for journalism on the continent. "This is the ultimate form of censorship," said Angela Quintal, coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists in Africa. "You censor the person who is killed, you censor the team they work with, and you send a message to others: if you cross the line, we will get you."

A spokesman for Ghana's police force told the BBC that all the evidence they reported was targeted killings and that they were investigating Hussein-Suale's work. Kennedy Agyapong was questioned informally by the police. He denies any responsibility for the murder and says that Anas and his team are master singers who use dubious methods. When asked by the BBC that he now regretted publishing Hussein-Suale's personal information, he replied: "I do not regret anything at all because they are evil".

Whoever hides behind the murder of Hussein-Suale may find that their actions have the opposite effect of the desired effect. In the days following his death, young Ghanaian journalists eager to follow in his footsteps flocked to Tiger Eye, Anas said. In time, Anas will examine them. Some can be put to the test. "We will continue to fight," he said. "Ahmed always said that posterity would not forgive us if we did not fight." Others have promised the same thing. "What happened to Ahmed will not hold me back," said Manbadeh Azure Awuni, an investigative journalist for Ghana's multimedia group. "As I speak to you, I am conducting an investigation, which will be released in Ghana in the coming weeks."

Hussein-Suale was buried last weekend in Accra. Family members, friends, politicians of various parties and foreigners from all over the city attended his funeral. His badbadination left an uprooted family. In addition to his three children, Hussein-Suale had welcomed a nephew – the son of a deceased brother in the performance of his policing duties – and supported many members of the extended family. It covered university fees, contributed to the financing of the marriage and provided for the maintenance of the houses. He was naturally generous, said his brother Kamil. "That's how we were raised.If you have something small, you share it."

In Madina, the family of Hussein-Suale always meets every night in front of the family home. Last night they were there. For 20 years, they gathered after work and prayers to sit and talk, nothing about particular, always in front, where friends and neighbors who pbaded by could stop and talk for a moment also .

Sometimes there are more than 20 people together until the early morning, sometimes there are fewer. The night Hussein-Suale died, there were six or seven people – close family and friends. He spent his last hours with the people who raised him and shared his real life. He was silent, as usual, and distracted by his phone, but he was in a good mood. Not everyone knew exactly what he was doing. They loved him for the man that he was that night in Madina. Across Ghana, people were freer because of their work.