Cape Coast, Dec. 11, GNA - A high court at Cape Coast on Wednesday sentenced Edward Ansah, 24, to 65 years imprisonment in hard labour for murdering one Yakubu Mensah and robbing him of his "Tico" taxi. He pleaded not guilty.

Edward Ben Tandoh, a sprayer at the Suame magazine in Kumasi, who was jointly charged with him for abetment of robbery and pleaded not guilty, was discharged. The presiding judge, Mr Justice Erasmus Gyinae, said he would give reasons for his discharge on January 17, 2007. Prosecuting Mr Robert Beke, a senior state attorney, told the court that on June 9 last year Ansah traveled to Mankessim and hired the deceased's vehicle. He took him to Saltpond under the pretext of hiring him to take him to Kumasi the following day. He said Ansah took Mensah to a nearby bush, strangled him to death and buried him in a shallow grave and left for Kumasi the following morning.

He engaged Tandoh to spray the vehicle from its original wine and yellow colour to white to facilitate its sale because he needed money to travel abroad.

But the shallow grave of the deceased was detected after his departure from the town and the police exhumed the body. It was sent to the Saltpond mortuary where the elder brother of the convict, a mortuary attendant, identified it as that of a taxi driver his younger brother had brought to the town the previous day. The girlfriend of the convict, one Ms Joan Azu who had also seen the driver, corroborated the revelation by volunteering information to the police that it was Ansah who brought the deceased to the town. On Ansah's return to Saltpond the following day the police arrested him and he admitted murdering Mensah.