Sunyani, Aug 7, GNA- The Sunyani High Court on Thursday sentenced four armed robbers, including a Nigerian, who stole various sums of money from a Goil Filling Station at Sampa, to life imprisonment. Alhaji Dabila Watara, alias Macho, Yaw Bio, alias Yakubu, Philip Kwadwo Tweneboah and David Dauda, the Nigerian.

A fifth accused, Belo Pierre Clavere, an Ivorian, is reported to have died of AIDS in the course of the trial.

The accused persons pleaded not guilty to two counts of conspiracy and robbery but were found guilty by a seven-member jury.

The court rejected Dauda's plea to be sent to Kumasi Prisons and as he was being escorted away by prison officers, he told the judge "God bless you."

The judge ordered the prison officers to bring him back to the courtroom and asked him (Dauda) to retract what he said.

The court ordered that all foreign monies retrieved from the accused are given back to the owner of the filling station and the pistols and other offensive weapons seized from the robbers must be destroyed.

The case of the prosecution was that Watara, a native of Sampa in Brong-Ahafo visited the accomplices resident in Kumasi and together conspired to rob the filling station.

They took off from Kumasi in a taxicab driven by Tweneboah. The accused and one Yahaya Mahama, now at large, armed with pistols and other offensive weapons attacked the filling station and made away with more than 59 million cedis and various sums of CFA and US dollars. The prosecution said the attendant and his brother mobilized some people to arrest the suspects but the suspects managed to escape with their booty.

Luck eluded them as their get-away vehicle got involved in an accident at a village on the way to Kumasi but they fled into a nearby bush.

Inhabitants of the village who had then got wind of the operation chased and arrested the five accused, but Mahama escaped. Just after their arrest the filling station attendant and others from Sampa who were pursuing the robbers arrived at the village and helped the inhabitants to send them to police.

About 45 million cedis, 200 US dollars and 90,000 CFA were retrieved from them.