Police dismiss reports on cocaine-turn-sodium carbonate saga

Front Page: January 13, 2012 Story: Albert K. Salia THE Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service has dismissed the two reports issued by the Justice Agnes Dordzie Committee and the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) on the cocaine-turn-soda saga, describing the premises on which the findings and conclusions are based as flawed. Addressing a press conference to comment on the reports issued by the Justice Dordzie Committee and the BNI last Tuesday on the cocaine saga, the Director-General of the CID, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP) Mr Prosper K. Agblor, said the police had decided to provide a GH¢50,000 reward for anyone who would volunteer credible information that would lead to the unravelling of the mystery and help bring the perpetrators to book, irrespective of who they were and which institution they worked for. While maintaining the position of the police that the exhibit had not been transformed into sodium carbonate on the premises of the police, Mr Agblor observed that both reports from the committee and the BNI “have not addressed the issue of where, how, when and by whom the exhibit was swapped” and pledged the support of the police to arrive at the truth. Outlining the reasons for dismissing the findings and conclusions of the two reports, he explained that before the exhibit was tendered in court, there was no evidence that it had been tampered with, for which reason no objection was raised by the defence counsel nor the court. “As soon as the seal was broken and the court took custody of the exhibit, the police had no dealings with it again, as the chain of custody had been broken,” he said. On the basis of the pungent smell on which the committee made its findings, Mr Agblor, who was flanked by the top hierarchy of the CID and the Director-General in charge of Welfare, DCOP David Ampah-Benin, said, “The defence counsel never cited the absence of ‘a strong peculiar smell’ as one of the grounds of his objection raised on September 28, 2011 during the trial.” He said the trial judge, in ordering for a re-testing of the exhibit, never gave the absence of a ‘pungent smell’ as one of the reasons. He said “after an exhibit is examined, tested and analysed by an accredited laboratory, the seal of that laboratory is embossed on the exhibit” and indicated that it was the case with the exhibit. “When Exhibit C was tendered in court on September 27, 2011, that seal was intact and, indeed, it was the responsibility of the trial judge, the defence counsel and the prosecution to ensure that the seal was intact. So before the trial judge ordered the seal to be broken, all the parties were clear in their minds that the seal was intact,” he said, and quoted the trial judge’s testimony from the Justice Dordzie Committee Report to support the position of the police. Mr Agblor made it clear that “as soon as the seal was broken on the orders of the judge in open court, the custodial responsibility of the police ended there”. He also referred to the committee’s report which made references to exhibits getting missing at the Cocoa Affairs Court and to one such case at the Circuit Court ‘9’ in which exhibits tendered on Friday got stolen by Monday, to which the deputy registrar answered in the affirmative. He said if the exhibit was to be kept by the court, then it was reasonable and proper that the court took measures to have it re-sealed in the presence of the defence and the prosecution to ensure its integrity and security. On the argument of ‘pungent smell’ by the committee, Mr Agblor said qualitative analysis and chemical testing of cocaine was scientific, as smell was no conclusive test and, “therefore, cannot be supported by any law because testing of cocaine is scientific but not by smell”. Touching on the alleged “Tsunami tremor” comment by Lance Corporal Thomas Anyekese, the CID boss said it was unfortunate that the committee could rely on an unsubstantiated allegation to arrive at its findings and stressed that apart from L/Cpl Anyekese denying making the allegation, he (Anyekese) was never confronted by the committee with the allegation for his reaction. Mr Agblor justified the refusal of L/Cpl Anyekese to append his signature to the sample for re-testing because the chain of custody had been broken when the judge ordered that the seal of the exhibit be broken, the exhibit had been kept overnight unprotected and also the fact that he was no longer the investigator in the case. He said one did not need three years to swap an exhibit and that the 48 hours during which the cocaine was in the custody of the court was more than enough for it to be swapped, as shown by the committee in revealing that exhibits kept on Friday got stolen by Monday. Mr Agblor expressed regret that the committee “sympathetically considered the lapses by the officers of the court to be merely administrative”. On the interim report by the BNI, he said the investigative body could not demonstrate clearly the involvement of the Narcotics Unit Commander, DSP Kofi Adzei Tuadzra, in the swapping of the cocaine, except that he was the head of the unit and responsible for the security of the exhibit. “It must be noted that it is the police effort that is enhancing the investigation of the BNI….We still stand by our conviction that the exhibit did not change form while it was in police custody,” Mr Agblor stated.