The Deputy Minister for Defence, Kwaku Amankwa Manu, has stated that the government will not offer any apology for the presence of armed military men in Ashaiman in the Greater Accra Region on Tuesday, March 7, 2023.
According to the Deputy Minister, while the government feels sorry for the alleged incidents of violence meted out to civilians during the operation, it is not in the books of the government to apologize for the operation which has been deemed by some critics, as unlawful.
“I think that it is only proper that we admit when there are excesses and in operations of this nature, you may get one or two people who may get carried away and so I mean if decent, innocent residents of Ashaiman were caught up in these operations, I, in my capacity as the deputy Defence Minister, will want to apologize for that. That, of course, we will apologize, but my brother, we are not going to apologize for the operation.”
Kwaku Amankwa Manu
Dozens of military officers stormed Ashaiman, in the operation that commenced on Tuesday dawn. The exercise, saw some soldiers entering the town in trucks, with a helicopter hovering over the town. The exercise, is said to be in response to the gruesome murder of a young soldier, by some unidentified persons on Saturday, March 4, 2023.
Videos of the invasion shared across social media, show various forms of assault being meted on residents by the rampaging officers, who subjected some of the residents to severe beatings.
Mr. Kofi Amankwa Manu in his interview, admitted that the soldiers may have acted outside their jurisdiction by entering into a community without the collaboration of the police, but was quick to justify that “when we are not in normal times, we cannot do normal things.”
The Deputy Defence Minister, also confirmed that the exercise was sanctioned by the military high command, as an operation to apprehend the suspects behind the murder of the junior soldier.
Slain Soldier Identified As 21-Year-Old Sherif Imoro
Sherif Imoro was born at Ashaiman on June 3, 2001, according to his father- Awudu Imoro. He enrolled in the Ghana Armed Forces in October 2021, was trained at Daboya and was posted to Sunyani, after passing out.
According to his father, he had his primary and junior high school education at Ashaiman, and senior high school at Akwamuman SHS, where he completed in 2017.
He was a member of the Ghana Armed Forces Band; a trumpeter and was stationed at Sunyani in the Bono Region. He was in Accra for a military course and in the last three weeks, had been visiting his parents in their home at Ashaiman every Friday, the report added. He was killed on March 3, when he was confronted by a gang that killed him.
It is reported that last Friday, he was on his way home and there was a heavy traffic in the area, so he alighted at Ashaiman, near the court building. It was around that area, that he met his untimely death at the hands of his attackers. Some reports suggest the gang mistook him to be a robber.
This caused members of the military on Tuesday, March 7, to place Ashaiman; a town located in the Greater Accra Region, under a siege.
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