The death of investigative journalist Ahmed Hussein-Suale will not go unpunished no matter how long it takes to bring the perpetrators to justice, President Nana Akufo-Addo has said.
At the 3rd African Media Convention in Accra on Friday, 17 May 2024, President Akufo-Addo assured the media that Hussein-Suale will get justice eventually.
“I assure you that Ghana’s image as a beacon of democracy on the African continent will not be diminished in this election year. It will be fully safeguarded as will the efforts of the law enforcement agencies to bring the killers of Ahmed Suale to book continue no matter how long it takes,” the president said.
The family of the murdered journalist, in August 2023, said that “there can be no escape route” for then-presidential aspirant Kennedy Agyapong regarding the murder of their relative.
The family, in a statement, said “nothing can be further from the truth” that it was the Assin Central MP’s “extremely reckless and criminal conduct that led to the death of our brother”.
“It was reckless for him to have shown the photos of Ahmed on his Net 2 TV while revealing his residential location”, the family insisted in a statement issued on Wednesday, 16 August 2023 in response to what it perceived as the remorselessness of Mr Agyapong during two recent separate interviews.
The family noted that “it was criminal for him to have rallied thugs to unleash violence on Ahmed for a ransom, he, Kennedy Agyapong, was willing to pay”.
The family continued: “But for Kennedy Agyapong’s reckless and criminal conduct, nobody would have known the face of Ahmed, who was an undercover reporter of Tiger Eye working on BBC projects”.
Mr Agyapong had said in his interview with Citi TV that he only asked his workers to beat up the journalist anytime he stepped foot on the pre ises of his media house.
“I showed the video of Ahmed Suale and when they saw it, my workers came to me and said, ‘Honourable, don’t you know this guy? You even gave him GHS1,500 to go and pay his school fees’. Then I said, ‘You have to be careful. If this guy comes here, beat him up because he is going to set this company up'”.
During the interview, Mr Agyapong said he had no regrets blowing Suale’s cover and inciting violence against him.
“No; not that I want to be president and, therefore, I will say I didn’t say that. No. I said if he comes to my premises, I didn’t say go and beat him outside”, he clarified, adding: “You know Ahmed Suale’s problems; he made a lot of mistakes, and in all the investigations Anas did, Anas never showed his face, so, all the people that Anas embarrassed in this country, it was Ahmed Suale who set them up. Suale was the one who set up the Finance Minister. They never saw Anas’ face”.
Suale’s family, however, said at the time that Mr Agyapong’s comments were a “post facto attempt to shift the blame on the professional conduct of Ahmed”, which, in their view, “cannot hold”.
“Over the period, Kennedy Agyapong has tried strenuously to change the effect of his call for retribution against Ahmed by saying his comments were location-bound, i.e., ‘presence at Net 2 premises’. We quote his comments verbatim here to prove how deceitful Kennedy Agyapong is – ‘Yes, that is him. Ahmed. He lives at Madina … wherever you see him, beat him up … I will pay for the cost'”.
“Clearly, Kennedy Agyapong was rallying support for the lynching of Ahmed without any restriction”, the family argued.
Source: classfmonline.com