“THEY HAVE killed my mother; she died out of shock this morning when she was listening to news on radio about how her two grandchildren and I were harassed at the Airport on Sunday night. I hear she had shock and died; they have killed her”: Stephen Asamoah-Boateng, former Minister for Information told DAILY GUIDE yesterday.

Ekua Awotwe, aged 81, gave up the ghost in the Mfantseman Constituency of the Central Region yesterday morning and reports say youth of the constituency are incensed over the development.

This happened a day after agents from the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) ambushed Mr. Asamoah-Boateng, aka Asabee, together with his wife and kids aged four and two, at the Kotoka International Airport, engaged them in a scuffle and eventually succeeded in preventing the former minister and his family from boarding a British Airways flight to London.

The agents, who refused to even show their identity cards, claimed Asabee could not travel because he was to report to the BNI the next day.

They seized his passport and those of his family and he was neither told the reason for the invitation nor shown any arrest warrant.

The development sparked a chaotic spectacle between his wife, pretty-faced Zuleka Asamoah, and the BNI agents as she dramatically snatched her husband’s passport from them and kept it on a part of her body where no sane man would dare remove.

Zuleka, who was travelling with her husband and two kids to London, engaged the said agents in a heated argument which resulted in a near-scuffle after they declined to disclose their identity, yet seized the four passports of the travelling family and physically prevented them from boarding the British Airways flight on which they already had their luggage.

The British Airways flight was eventually ordered to off-load the luggage of Asamoah-Boateng and his family.

Eye-witness accounts say having seized the passports, the agents refused to disclose their identity or explain why Asabee was to report to the BNI the next day and this generated a commotion between the two parties.

It was in the midst of this chaos that Zuleka reportedly collected the passports from the agents and quickly put it in her dress, as her husband kept demanding that the agents showed their identity cards and warrant to prevent him from exercising his freedom of movement at a time he had not been charged with any offence.

In the midst of the chaos, Asamoah Boateng was heard demanding on top of his voice: “Where is your ID? Disclose your identity; why are you hiding your ID card? Let us see it and know who you are.

Master, are you from the BNI and who is your leader here?

In any case, why are you inviting me? Let me know why you are preventing me from travelling. Give me the why and you can take me. This is my human rights and you cannot stop me. Sweetheart let’s go, don’t mind them we are moving forward.

“The only way I would stop my travel for you is if I have an arrest warrant. Master, chief, no, no, no, no, master, excuse me. This is Gestapo, this is Gestapo! You are so disgraceful.

Is this what you want Obama to come and see? What a crude way to invite someone by stopping him from travelling; put it in writing or show me your warrant and I would follow you.

“Leave my child alone; how can you treat children like that? Are you human beings? Do you have children at all, why are you doing this when I have my four-year-old witnessing all this?

Disgraceful people! You come and hide here and say you are inviting me. Are you people so disgraceful? You have instructions from who that I cannot be told? ”

Zuleka was also heard speaking to an official of British Airways at the airport and insisting that she does not know the agents and she could not trust them since they were unwilling to disclose their identity.

“These are a group of people I do not know from nowhere near Adam and yet they want to worry us? See them talking about law, what law? How do we know you are not working on your own accord and imagination since you are hiding your ID cards? Cowards!

“Why seize my passport; what have I done and if you think my only crime is that I married a politician then so be it. Look at this shameful attitude you are displaying in front of children.

“If you people have come and you cannot travel, you think nobody has a right to get out of the country. You do not even know how to go anywhere. What is that? Where is the documentation of your invitation from whomever? Show me your invitation and where you are from. He would not go anywhere.”

DAILY GUIDE gathered as at press time yesterday that government is readying itself to drag Zuleka to court over what it terms ‘obstructing national security operatives’.

By Halifax Ansah-Addo