The prosecutor in the trial of Gregory Afoko at an Accra high court – who has been charged with murdering Adams Mahama, the Upper East Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) – has tendered in some very disturbing pictures of the deceased as exhibits.
The pictures, which were tendered to the court through Lance Corporal James Kofi Younge – a ninth prosecution witness in the case – show the burnt body of the late NPP regional chairman at the time he was receiving treatment at the Bolgatanga Regional Hospital.
Others also show his corpse being deposited at the hospital’s morgue as well as those of his wife, Hajia Zeinabu, who sustained acid burns when she was trying to help the husband who was struggling from the burns.
Adams Mahama was murdered through an acid bathe whiles he was driving home on the night of May 2, 2015.
Gregory Afoko has since been arraigned before the court for allegedly being the one who committed the heinous crime.
Asabke Alangdi, a suspected accomplice of Afoko, is on the run as police could not arrest him at the time the crime was committed.
Lance Corporal Younge, who was stationed at the Bolgatanga Regional police headquarters as a crime scene photographer at the time of the incident, had been telling the court how he got involved in the investigation of the case.
He tendered in a number of photographs to the court, none of which was objected to by the defence counsel.
He also submitted snapshots at the crime scene which showed the vehicle Adams Mahama was driving when the acid was allegedly poured on him; and they were admitted by the court as Exhibits A series.
A picture of the deceased’s burnt body whiles he was receiving treatment at the intensive care unit of the hospital was admitted as Exhibit B while those of the corpse at the morgue were labeled Exhibits C, C1 and C2.
However, there were doubts over pictures supposed to be those of the wife of the deceased which show burns she sustained whiles helping the deceased.
Defence lawyer Osafo Buabeng challenged the authenticity of the pictures as they did not show the face of the wife. He suggested that the pictures were those of a male and not a female.
But the witness told the court that Hajia Zeinabu had initially refused to allow him to photograph her because of her Islamic believes, but he had to convince her before he could take the shots.
He rejected the lawyer’s claims that the pictures were those of a male instead of a female, saying, “I took the pictures myself.”
Lance Corporal Younge corroborated the evidence of Detective Sergeant Benjamin Kusi that Afoko misled police officers in their attempt to arrest Asabke Alangdi.
“The accused person (Afoko) intentionally took us to a different house and when we got to the house the tenants told us that Asabke’s house was three houses back from where we had already passed. We had to quickly go back to the suspect’s actual house. When we got there we did not meet him,” the witness told the court.
The defence lawyer however, rejected the claim, saying at the time the police were going to arrest Asabke in his house, the witness and Afoko were not sitting in the same vehicle and he could therefore not make such a claim as he has no basis to do so.
The witness was discharged after the defence counsel had ended his cross-examination.
Hearing continues today when the prosecution, led by Mathew Amponsah, a chief state attorney, is expected to present the state’s tenth prosecution witness.
