19 year old Rufai Alhassan, a self-styled witch-doctor operating in the Pusiga District of the Upper East Region, together with 37 year old Abdulai Isaaka have each been handed a two year jail sentence for assault and conspiracy to commit crime.
The imprisoned ‘witch- hunters’ will still be tried on two other counts, threats of death and trial by ordeal.
The popular spiritualists were put before the Sandema Magistrate Court Presided over by His Worship Joseph Baah-Ansah on Thursday, July 30, 2020. They were arrested after the Sanneh Institute, a local NGO petitioned the Inspector General of Police and the Presidency over their activities in the Pusiga area.
The petition which was accompanied by a 2:41 seconds video showed the self-styled witch doctor and his father torturing and beating women who are alleged to be witches.
It has emerged that for close to two years, Rufai Alhassan, the 19 year old believed to possess the gift of identifying and neutralizing witches has been operating from his base in Widana, a village under the Pusiga District in the Upper East Region of Ghana.
Meanwhile, father of the jailed young man and one other suspect who pleaded not guilty to all four charges have been remanded into prison custody and to reappear on Tuesday, August 11, 2020.
In providing the police account of the arrest, Public Affairs Officer of the Upper East Regional Police Command, Assistant Superintendent of Police, ASP David Fianko Okyere, said investigations are still ongoing and called for public support.
“We moved in to arrest them on Thursday and on the following day, we sent them to court with the intention of getting remand so that we could continue with the investigations but the court thought it wise to take their plea where two of them who pleaded guilty to two of the charges, were jailed. The charges were conspiracy to commit crime, assault, trial by ordeal and threat of death. And based on their plea, the judge sentenced the two to 24 months in prison,” he said.
