By: Spencer Kwabena Boateng Mensah

 Impunity Watch News Staff Writer

TAKORADI, Ghana – On September 27, 2021, the police in Takoradi sent Josephine Panyin Mensah, 27, to court with charges of deceiving a public officer and publication of false news with intent to cause fear and panic.

The first charge was her acting, “with intent to evade the requirement of the Law, [because] she made statement to Public Officer and the general public that she was pregnant and kidnapped which she well knew at the time of making it to be false.”

Her second charge was for “publication of statement which is likely to cause fear and alarm to the general public or to disturb the public peace knowing or having reason to believe that the statement is false.”

Prosecutor Superintendent, Emmanuel Basintale told the court that the accused confessed faking her pregnancy and kidnapping to cover her alleged miscarriage in May 2021.

Husband of accused, Michael Simons reported to the police that his pregnant wife disappeared after she left her mother’s home in the early morning for a walk on September 16.

According to the police, her mother Agnes Essel also received a call from an unknown caller the same day but she could only hear distressed voice of her daughter crying that she had been kidnapped. The accused was found after five days later at a church in a town nearby and was immediately taken to a hospital where she told of her alleged ordeal of being the sole survival among 12 other unknown kidnapped women.

The police say that she told them “she gave birth to a baby girl and afterwards fell unconscious [for] the second time and had no idea how she [survived].”

But doctors from two hospitals could not find any trace of postpartum sign or marks of violence within the last six days of her disappearance.   

The police investigations proved that there was no prenatal records nor diagnosis of pregnancy at the accused’s original hospital. “Accused claimed she has been wearing a pregnancy prosthesis…but threw same into the bush while trekking.”

The prosecutor added that “accused also admitted that the [number] through which she spoke to her mother was her old sim card which she discarded afterwards.”

The accused pleaded guilty and has been bailed since her first appearance in court and the case has been adjourned to be reconvened on October 14, 2021.

Ghana has recorded several kidnapping and killing cases in recent times. One of the prominent cases is the kidnapping of three girls in Takoradi which particularly caused severe tension between the police and public in 2019.

For further information, please see:

Adom Online – Abesim Murder: Residents Accuse Suspect of Killing More People – 28 Aug. 2021

Citinewsroom – Takoradi Woman Pleads not Guilty in Court for Fake Pregnancy and Kidnapping – 27 Sept. 2021.

Ghana Web – Decomposed Bodies of 3 Kidnapped Takoradi Girls Found – 2 Aug. 2019.

Modern Ghana – We May Drag Fake Takoradi Pregnant Woman to Court – ACP Kwesi Ofori – 27 Sept. 2021

 

By Ryan Ockenden

Impunity Watch News Staff Writer

CABO DELGADO, Mozambique – Across northern Mozambique, Al-Shabab – an ISIS-backed militant group – is kidnapping boys as young as twelve years old and training them to fight and raid their very own villages. Mothers and fathers are beaten and brutalized to relinquish their children, consistently offering themselves up to be taken instead. Once in Al-Shabab’s possession, the boys are trained in weaponry usage, given Islamic classes, and even told to pick a wife amongst the young girls that have also been kidnapped.

Since 2017, Al-Shabab has been terrorizing the gas-rich northern regions of Mozambique, raiding villages and towns to build their caliphate. As the caliphate grows larger, the organization has grown bolder. Their attacks on villages routinely leave dozens dead and thousands displaced. An attack earlier this year occurred on a multi-billion-dollar gas project, prompting a large military intervention from neighboring nations such as Rwanda, Botswana, and South Africa.

In 2004, Mozambique ratified the United Nations Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child for the involvement of children in armed conflict, which prohibits non-state armed groups, like Al-Shabab, from recruiting, let alone kidnapping, children. The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights have asserted that, in general, nation parties to the African Charter, which Mozambique is, bear the primary responsibility for protecting and promoting human rights, punishing perpetrators, and passing legislation to help rectify human rights abuses.

The Prime Minister of Mozambique, Carlos Agostinho do Rosario, announced this week that the nation needs $300 million to reconstruct the insurgency in the Cabo Delgado region. While it is absolutely important to secure funding for post-conflict reconstruction, the conflict is not even over. Young boys continue to be kidnapped and trained to fight against the government. Young girls continue to be kidnapped to be child-brides. Innocent families continue to be displaced, left homeless and separated from one another.

It is important for the Mozambique government to create a plan for reconstruction, but they will not reach the reconstruction phase if they cannot put a stop to Al-Shabab’s continued assault on the nation. Before they can rebuild for their people, they must save their people.

For further information, please see:

ACHPR – Press release on the International Day Against the Use of Child Soldiers – 13 Feb. 2019

All Africa – Mozambique: Al-Shabaab Deploying Child Soldiers in Mozambique, Says HRW – 1 Oct. 2021

Human Rights Watch – Mozambique ISIS-Linked Group Using Child Soldiers – 29 Sept. 2021

Yahoo News – Mozambique Insurgents Train Child Soldiers: HRW – 29 Sept. 2021