The Test Case Trial of the British teenagers jailed for Cocaine

One reads with much dismay the judgement pronounced by the Accra court on 23/1/08 regarding the British teenagers, arrested at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra on 2nd July 2007 for carrying 6.5kg of cocaine. As much as this verdict defeats the main purpose for setting up a joint collaboration between the Ghanaian and British governments to fight drug trafficking, it also raises important hypocritical issues.

We will all agree that drug crime anywhere especially in the west is not taken lightly. This is because its consequences to the society have been devastating resulting in unfortunate deaths especially among the youth, emotional upheaval in families, and last but not least, the loss of revenue to the country where the problem is prevalent. Huge human and monetary resources go into tackling this menace especially as the drug baron’s metamorphosise their strategies to evade arrest.

The collaboration between the Ghana and British governments to flush out couriers using Ghana as a hub to the west has chalked huge successes since the project begun in November 2006. All sorts of people have been apprehended and tried in the courts and confidence had built up to this progress until these teenagers were apprehended.

From the onset, this was going to be the greatest test ever to this joint collaboration until the verdict that had taken forever to come out was released. One sees this verdict as a TWO TIMING HYPOCRISY exhibited in the execution of justice. The verdict defeats the very purpose of the fight on drugs and the whole project appears a mere joke. Drug dealers will call it a great day for their course and we should not be surprised if drug trafficking to Europe along West Africa’s borders heightens.

Many analysts have said our colonial masters still Lord over us and our independence means absolutely nothing until we can independently decide for ourselves without interference from them. In the west anyone who is arrested for drug peddling faces the full rigors of the law irrespective of nationality. If this test case had occurred in Britain and teenagers of another nationality were the culprits, would the verdict have been the same or would they have faced the full rigors of the law? Would the courts have considered any social services documents from the country of the victims prior to giving their verdicts? MANY PEOPLE WILL BE EXTREMELY AMAZED IF NO PRESSURE WAS PUT TO BEAR ON THE JUDICIARY BY ANY POLITICAL FORCES. BY THIS CAN WE BE CONFIDENT TO SAY THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT HAD NO HAND IN INFLUENCING THIS VERDICT BY FLEXING MUSCLES WITH THE POLITICAL LEADERSHIP OF GHANA? This puts our sovereignty as a nation in question and heightens the hypocrisy of the west people talk about.

Everyone knows that British 16-year-olds are intelligent, smart and have insight into what they do. We see and read this daily in the news. To try to fool the world that they did not know they were carrying drugs is interesting, but not to know who contracted them is even more intriguing. They may of course not know who the kingpin of that operation was but at least they know who gave the drugs to them and who the recipient in Britain would be. Have these contacts been pursued to see the mastermind apprehended? Teenagers have always been known to conceal information even when they know who an offender is. One is also amazed at the resolve of these girls to lie to their parents –telling them they were going to France when they knew very well they were coming to Ghana. One feels sorry for such broken parental trust, but at the same time their parents are partly to blame for their woes considering the sequence of events before the news first broke.

Are these teens who they really say they are? How do we know they have not in the past been involved in drug related offences? Is this very lenient sentence a good lesson for them or just another holiday in a tropical friendly country? One hopes if they are genuinely remorseful for their actions, they will learn and move on but if not then a wrong signal is all we have sent out here. If they were never arrested, would they have turned into international drug mules making thousands of pounds through easy trips?

To our judiciary, this verdict is sad for justice because the presiding judge has behaved as an official not fit for purpose. Can this judge convince everyone that 1 year sentence (but in essence 9 months) is appropriate for a crime of such magnanimity? If the judge was asleep during proceedings he needs to wake up now. Where is the independent judiciary we talk about of which the Chief Justice parades round the country advocating? What was contained in the social services report from Britain, the facts of which have not been made public? Was the judge pressurised to give this verdict? I hope not, but if so then shame on him/her because he/she does not understand the gravity of the case he/she presided over. And HOW CAN THEY SERVE THIS SENTENCE IN A FOSTER HOME and not in juvenile detention centre or correctional facility? ARE THESE GIRLS CONVICTED OF A CRIME OR ARE THEY IN GHANA FOR FOSTER CARE? This makes interesting reading.

Well justice is always said to be like the steam from a kettle. You either get it or lose out if you refuse to see through it. At the end of the day, such hypocrisy will never help the fight against drugs, neither any other form of crime and disorder. Certainly, this test case has just opened the floodgates for drug trafficking along the West Coast of Africa which we have been fighting so hard to keep closed.

Drug dealers will not be deterred by the lenient sentences meted out. This will help their resolve to persevere and not be discouraged because they will continue to target the youth since wrong signals are being sent out to them. Finally 50 years of independence is no independence until a nation can be economically, politically and financially resolved to shirk off interference from other sources, be it political or economic. The British government and British Council should be ashamed because this hypocrisy is against the fight on drugs they have pioneered and so should the Ghanaian Judiciary. This is a sad day indeed.