'I was arrested because I am not a Ghanaian'

Accra, Aug. 8, GNA - Mrs Rosa Iris Dosoo, the Cuban secretary to the fugitive cocaine baron Vasquez Geraldo Duarte David, on Tuesday told the Justice Georgina Woode Committee that she was arrested several times in connection with the case.

She said although she had nothing to do with the case or with the house in which the cocaine was seized but only worked for Vasques as a translator and a secretary at his company, Compimchez Limited, the Police tried to link her to the case by causing her arrest.

Mrs Dosoo said the Police told her that she was arrested because she worked with a company that dealt in cocaine.

She said her house was searched and her husband was also invited to the Police Headquarters for interrogation but was not arrested as suggested to her by Mr James Abiaduka, counsel of Ms Grace Asibi, girlfriend of Vasquez, during cross-examination.

Mrs Dosoo disagreed with a suggestion that her husband was a close friend of Mr Vasques and that was why she was arrested with her husband. She said she felt that she was arrested because she was a foreigner whom the Police wanted to link to the case.

Mrs Dosoo told the Committee that after her bail the first time, she decided to travel to Cuba her home country because her three-year-old son needed medical attention, but her passport was seized by Superintendent of Police Edward Tabiri, the Police Officer at the centre of a 200,000 dollar bribery allegation.

She said it took a bit of convincing on her part to the Police that she was not running away and that Cuba was a well organised country where anyone could be found within five hours after making a formal report to the authorities before her passport was released for her to travel with her son.

Mrs Dosoo said she was in Cuba for about a month before coming back to Ghana.

She admitted that she continued communicating with Vasques until the Police arrested her and searched her house. "That was where the communication ceased."

She said she kept the communication because Mr Tabiri had been urging her to tell Vasquez to come and that if he came nothing would be done to him.

On the issue as to how she got to know one Iddrisu Adama, an alleged brother of Ms Asibi, who was said to have left the scene of the raid five minutes before the Police got there, Mrs Dosoo said it was Ms Asibi, who introduced Iddrisu to them in their office at Compimchez. She said she was in the office with the cleaner and the accountant when Ms Asibi first introduced her brother Iddrisu to them.

Ms Asibi has repeatedly denied that Iddrisu was her brother Mrs Dosoo said after Ms Asibi had approached her concerning a 300,000 dollars request through her to her boyfriend who was then outside Ghana to bribe the Police to kill the case, she also had a call from Iddrisu, who was then in Nigeria.

She said Iddrisu called her to complain about the sister's inability to help him out of trouble and that her sister had been telling him a lot of conflicting stories relating to giving some monies to the Police, but she did not ask him what the stories were. Mrs Dosoo told the Committee that it was Ms Asibi, who first told her that her brother Iddrisu left the country immediately after the operation at East Legon.

The Ministry of the Interior in July 2006 established the Justice Georgina Woode Committee to investigate among other things allegations of bribery against some Police Officers after a quantity of cocaine was seized from a house near East Legon in Accra.