Ghana’s Deputy Defense Minister Kofi Amankwa Manu apologized for military misconduct after soldiers were deployed in Ashaiman, a suburb of the capital Accra on Tuesday.
Soldiers wreaked havoc on some residents of Ashaiman on Tuesday as helicopters flew over the area over the stabbing of a young military officer, Constable Imoru Sheriff, in the town on Saturday March 4, 2023.
Ghanaian Armed Forces revealed that this operation in the area was to find a man accused of assassinating a military officer and it was approved by its senior leadership.
“GAF wishes to state categorically that the military operation, which was sanctioned by the Military High Command, was NOT to avenge the killing of the soldier but rather to fish out the perpetrators of the heinous crime,” GAF said in its statement on Wednesday.
In an interview with local media, Deputy Defense Minister, Mr. Amankwa Manu, said, “If the innocent and respected residents of Achimane get caught up in these operations, I, as Deputy Defense Minister, apologize.” He added that the ministry is not responsible for will excuse the operation.
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In its communiqué, the Armed Forces of Ghana said that the armed forces had arrested around 184 suspects between the ages of 21 and 47 after the operations in Achiman-Taifa and Tulaco and had since handed them over to the military police.
“Trooper Sheriff, who was based in Sunyani, was on a training course in Accra and requested permission to visit his parents in Ashaiman, where he grew up, but was shot near the Amanya Hotel in the early hours of Saturday.”
This is not the first time civilians have allegedly killed a military man in Ghana. In May 2017, a Ghanaian army officer was lynched by an angry mob of townspeople in Denkyera-Obuasi in the country’s central region. Captain Maxwell Adam Mahama went running in the morning and had the gun in his car.
According to reports, the army officer stopped to ask for directions, the villagers saw his gun and assumed it was an armed assailant, and he went to alert the others. Mahama was beaten by a mob, stoned to death and partially burned.
