British cocaine teens freed

Accra, July 17, GNA- The two British girls arrested in July last year for attempting to smuggle six kilograms of cocaine worth US$300,000 from Ghana to the United Kingdom, were on Thursday set free after serving nine months in juvenile detention.
Yasemin Vatnserver, 17, and Yatunde Diya, 17, were whisked away at about 08.50 hours from the Borstal Home Senior Correctional Facility in Accra where they were held.
They were carried away in a white four-wheel drive vehicle belonging to the British High Commission and covered with Ghanaian "kaba" cloth to hide them from the cameras of journalists. Mr. Ben Allotey, a top Prisons official at the correctional facility, which was originally meant for boys, told the GNA that the British High Commission specifically requested that journalists should be kept at bay.
Early on Thursday morning when journalists arrived at the Home, they were kept waiting at the entrance with the excuse that visitors were only allowed in from 09.30hours.
But at about 08.30 hours officials of the British High Commission, the lawyer of the girls and a representative of an international legal rights civil society organisation were allowed to drive through. After about 20 minutes they drove out with the girls whiles journalists looked on because they were not allowed to use their cameras.
The two girls were arrested on July 2, 2007 at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) with three kilograms each of cocaine concealed in their laptop bags.
They were put on trial over a period of three months at an Accra Juvenile Court and sentenced to one year in juvenile detention. The court ruled that having been held in detention for three months during their trial they should serve only nine months in addition. While the ruling pleased the girls, their families and British-based international legal rights organisations, Ghanaians, including the Minister of States at the Ministry of Interior, Nana Obiri Boahene, thought the girls should have been handed the maximum three-year sentence.
An official of the correctional facility told journalists that the girls were well behaved while in detention and did attend morning devotions religiously even though they were among boys.