Mobile phone repairer gets 30 years for robbery

Accra, Aug. 23, GNA - A mobile phone repairer was on Tuesday sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment for robbing an airline official and his household at gun point. Abdul Salim Ali, aka KG, pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy and robbery.

The court at the end of the trial found him guilty and sentenced him to 15 years' on each count. The sentences are to run consecutively. Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Kofi Blagodzi told the court that on February 27, this year, the victim, Mr Samuel Quartey and his family were sleeping when he heard gun shots in his compound and later the smashing of his glass door into pieces. DSP Blagodzi said the landlady, a witness in the case, who peeped through her window and watched the activities, spotted Ali. The prosecutor said Ali and her accomplices, now at large, broke the kitchen door and entered the Mr Quartey's bedroom. Ali and his accomplices, who were armed with locally manufactured pistols, searched through the room and made away with GH¢600, a Toshiba laptop valued GH¢1,200 and two mobile phones valued at GH¢50. The following day, DSP Blagodzi said, Mr Quartey's wife spotted Ali and his accomplices at a shop and informed her husband who in turn alerted the police.

The police traced the convict and his accomplices to their homes where two locally manufactured pistols with two cartridges were retrieved but they escaped. On December 1, 2010, the police had information that Ali was at Awhoshie where he was arrested but his accomplices escaped. 23 Aug. 11