Sakawa Killers Caged

THE THREE men suspected to have beheaded a 12-year-old boy for ritual purposes were yesterday slapped with a 2-week remand in prison custody by a Sunyani Circuit Court. The suspected killers, Sumaila Yahaya, 32, Akwasi Kuma aka Mom Amie, 48, and Yaw Fosu, 28, yesterday made their first appearance in court after they were arrested for possessing a severed human head about two weeks ago. The presiding judge, Ekow Mensah, remanded the suspected killers on the plea of the prosecutor to re-appear on May 31, 2011. Earlier, Frederick Adjei, Brong Ahafo Regional Chief Prosecutor, had urged the court to remand the suspects into prison custody to enable the police to put all their facts together. Supt. Adjei said the prosecution was compelled to bring the case to the circuit court for trial because all the magistrate courts in the city were not sitting yesterday. According to him, the police decided to bring the case before the circuit court in order to remand the suspects into lawful custody while plans were being made to transfer the case to a magistrate court to begin the actual trial. Sumaila Yahaya, who was first seen with the severed human head, was arrested on May 6, at the residence of a Techiman-based spiritualist, Mallam Musa Bamba, who caused his arrest, whilst his accomplices, Akwasi Kuma and Yaw Fosu, were arrested three days later at Bompa near Atebubu, where the decomposing body of 12-year-old Kwame Amoah was also found. After his arrest at Techiman, Sumaila Yahaya gave conflicting information to the police about the source of the severed head. He initially told the police that he had got the human head from a dead body that had been buried at Kunsu in the Kintampo area. However, the police could not trace the torso after searching the area. Sumaila Yahaya later changed his story and told the police that someone called Alidu Wala at Apoma, a farming community in the Kintampo South District who is now at large, handed over to him the severed human head for the rituals, which also could not be established. The prime suspect finally led the police to the Atebubu area where the decomposing body of his victim was found, leading to the arrest of his accomplices at the same village.