Wa defilement case suspect pleads not guilty to all charges

Correspondence from Upper West Region

Abdul-Rashid Ahmed alias Anaata, the 35-year-old suspect at the centre of several defilement cases brought against him over 12 girls in the Wa Municipality of the Upper West Region, has pleaded not guilty to all the 18 charges against him at the Wa Circuit Court on Monday, August 14, 2023.

He also pleaded not guilty to 5 counts of attempted defilement and 4 counts of defilement.

He pleaded not guilty to each of the charges as the prosecution read them to him.

Anaata made his first appearance in court on Monday, August 7, 2023, after he was arrested for the alleged defilement cases.

The Wa Circuit Court and its environs were filled to the brim by interesting parties to the high-profile case with women making the higher numbers at the venue due to his profession as Master of Ceremonies (MC) in many local marriage celebrations.

Not even the intermittent drizzling of rain deterred the observers from continuing to witness the defilement case of the popular MC.

After not pleading guilty to all the charges, the Court adjoined the case to Tuesday, August 15, 2023,

The Principal State Attorney, Saeed Abdul-Shakur in an interview with journalists said: "Tomorrow, we're bringing in some three of the victims to do in camera hearing. We'll try as much as possible to protect their identities to have an in-camera hearing of the three of the alleged defiled victims”.

On his accusations by a section of the public for being biased in his commentaries on the court case, the renowned Principal State Attorney affirmed the claim indicating that it was borne of ignorance for anyone to expect a State Prosecutor to be neutral in his work.

"The other time I granted media an interview they said that I was prejudicial in my commentary. An attack that was unfortunate for they don't understand my role. I am a prosecutor I am not neutral in this matter. I'm the one that has the evidence and I believe I can secure conviction that's why I went to the court in the first place”.

"If any of you wants to be neutral, that is his job. As for me, I'm not neutral in this matter I'm very willing to do my work as a prosecutor," the State Prosecutor rectified.

According to him, his mandate is to always prove his case beyond every reasonable doubt for prosecution but he is not the one to have a culprit jailed or not.

The learned Counsel also gave some education on why there was the need to make some changes in the dockets regarding the cases against the accused to go in tandem with each other as some are different from the mode they were committed to as well as the locations of the perpetuation.

"Today we decided to properly separate the dockets. You realize the very day we came to court, there were eleven counts. Then we took and the Police arranged and we took over, the office of the Attorney General took over the prosecution, we realized that there are several acts that you can't put together because some happened in 2021 and some in 2022 and 2023. Let's say for example the 13 and 12 years (girls) he sent to the bush, he sent another 13 and 14 years (girls) to the same place to have sex and these are two different sets of girls so you can't lump them together because it is not from the same act”.

"The first docket, three girls that he took to his matrimonial home, 11, 12, and 13. He took and had sex with them in turns in a threesome. And the second docket is another threesome of three sets of girls. The third one appears to be an agent sort of. She is 12 years but she has a big body. She can bring the other two girls, different two girls as a third”.

"So you see, these things happen differently and so you see these things happen differently in different places. Some happened in the bush, others on a motorbike, and others by the roadside, so if you lump them together, it'll make evidence a bit ...," the Attorney disclosed.

On the actual charges of the embattled popular MC, Rashid alias Anaata, Lawyer Saeed Abdul-Shakur stated: "We now have about 20 counts, the minimum in a docket is 2 charges, and the maximum is 9. First, we charged him with the defilement of children under 16 years. Defilement of minors. You know by the laws of our lands, if you have canal knowledge of somebody under 16 years, you have defiled the person. And we have charged him with that”.

"And we've charged him with indecent assault. We have charged him with attempted to defile. Some escaped, there were those that he fondled, inserted his hands in their private parts, and resisted the actual sex. And there were those he succeeded. And so we have charged with attempt, we have charged him with indecent assault, and we have charged him with defilement”, he said.

He furthered that the decision not to remand the suspect yet was due to some ongoing investigations by the Police after which that would be done.

According to him, the total number of the alleged victims is 12 adding that 3 will come to testify in court, on Tuesday, August 15, 2023, in camera with their identities duly protected.

Charity Nature, Director of the Department of Gender, in her reaction, said she was impressed about how the proceedings were ongoing,

"This is a case that you and I agree that it shouldn't bypass me or it shouldn't bypass our office. From the very day of its inception, we've been interested and we've been following keenly. And our focus has been on both the culprit and the survivors. So being in court today, was to allow us to further gather the docket that has been put against him and the information so that we can better serve the survivors”, she said.

She called on parents to pay particular attention to their wards and take good care of them even with their modest earnings as a family as most of the victims she spoke to actually succumbed to the influence of just that having meagre amounts of money.

The complainant in the case, Eliasu Yussif Baba alias BAHASS, a resident of Dondoli who is the Chief Executive Officer of BAHASS, a non-governmental foundation also expressed his satisfaction of how the proceedings had gone so far.